badgenome said:
I shouldn't be surprised to find that the Paul and non-Paul elements of the tea party have different assessments of the threat posed by Islamism and different ideas as to what should be done about it, but a throwaway line in a Palin speech and an article on small, obscure website don't exactly prove me wrong: for a mass movement, the tea party has been remarkably disciplined. But since polls consistently show that even Republicans have finally soured on military interventionism, and tea party supporters are even less keen on such adventures, I think you're vastly overstating how much credibility and how many followers the neoconservative philosophy has at this point, especially within the tea party. Neoconservatism peaked shortly after 9/11 and went into sharp decline as the Bush administration dragged it through the mud with its staggering incompetence to the point that the very term "neocon" is still used as a slur, albeit one whose actual definition eludes most people who hurl it. |
The Tea Party got its start out of the remains of the Ron Paul campaign, so I would say it makes sense that it is relatively organized. The Ron Paul campaign paved the way for post-2008 for organizing on the Internet and so on.
