It's interesting to note how many in the tea party's purported leadership are running away from any suggestion that there are underlying similarities between themselves and the Occupy Wall Street movement. For example, in a recent article in the New York Times Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, is quoted as saying:
We have worked very hard to be respectful of the laws . . . We protest and complain, but we’re also trying to work within the system. It’s frustrating to watch people who have an utter lack of respect for our form of government.
And no less an authority than Karl Rove weighed in a Wall Street Journal editorial:
The tea party files for permits for its rallies and picks up its trash afterwards. Occupy Wall Street tolerates protesters who defecate on police cars, allows the open sale of drugs at protests, and features women walking around rallies topless.
The tea party has settled down to democracy's patient, responsible work, either by exerting influence on the Republican Party nomination process or educating Americans on the issues in order to hold politicians in both parties to account.
The issue of affinities aside, what these statements reveal more than anything else is that the Tea Party, or at least its spokespeople, lack a real understanding of what the actual Tea Party was about. "Focus on the patient, responsible work" of democracy, uphold the laws, and "respect" existing "form[s] of government;" this doesn't strike me as the values held by the actually, exiting Sons of Liberty.