Huggies brand diapers, or was it Loves? It doesn't matter. Years and years and years ago they started advertising a NEW development in their diaper technology. From the bespectacled, white coated crack team of diaper scientists at HuggiesLabs, direct to market...
Diapers for boys
and
Diapers for girls
One had a triangle where the boy might pee, and the other had a rectangle where the girl might pee, as illustrated with the notorious "blue liquid."
This breakthrough lasted several years until the scientists at Huggies (or whoever) developed something even better. Even more brilliant....introducing....
Diapers for boys AND girls. NEW! His AND Her Huggies!
The moral of the story is...to generate interest or excitement about something kid of idiotic or longstanding, all you have to do is put the word NEW! next to it.
And so we come to the Tea Party.
It's not like these dudes sprouted up overnight.
I mean...It's not like your anti-government cousin hasn't been showing up to weddings engaging people in unpleasant and emotionally escalating but ideologically inconsistent political conversations for the past 30 years....
C'mon. These guys have been out there forever.
And we all know one or two. Or three or four. They want what they want, and they don't want what they don't want, and there's not much rhyme or reason to it...
They're called "Libertarians"
They've been called "Libertarians" for decades...
Here's Wikipedia's definition of Libertarianism
Libertarianism is a political theory that advocates the maximization of individual liberty in thought and action[1][2][3] and the minimization or even abolition of the state.[4][5] Libertarians embrace viewpoints ranging from pro-property to anti-property and from a minimal state (or minarchist) to anarchist.
And the Internet Ecyclopedia of Philosophy
Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection of individual liberty.
If it seems like the Tea Party is hard to nail down and define on an individual by individual bases....
IT'S BECAUSE THEY'RE LIBERTARIANS
What part of "Ron Paul won the CPAC straw poll" is throwing off the Media?
The TEA PARTY...is a bunch of empowered Libertarians.
They're repackaged libertarians.
Wanna know who this strange new Tea Party is?
THEY'RE LIBERTARIANS.
Why are they irritated with Republicans but will vote for them anyway?
BECAUSE THEY'RE LIBERTARIANS.
Why do they seem to be ideologically inconsistent and all over the map but within a general spectrum of crazy?
BECAUSE!!! They're LIBERTARIANS.
This isn't a mystery. Tea Partiers are Libertarians.