Exactly.  That's the defining characteristic of a Neo Conservative.

A Neo Conservative is a regular Conservative who is for an increase in government.

The Tea Party are more "Traditional Conservatives".

Exactly. He was not a tea-partier, conservative, or anything of the ilk. The tea party is the result of Bush and Obama's excess with government spending.

I wouldn't doubt that a lot of the politicians that are joining the tea party because of its strength are neo-conservatives. Palin really doesn't seem to be any bit of a traditional conservative.

I always find it amazing how conservatives promote small government and then so badly want stronger surveillance programs.  I guess military, domestic spying, prisons, etc. don't count as "government."

apparently the republicans called for a revote....

Well, the theory goes "Government should be small because we should only be involved in the few things the Government should be doing."

The Military and Domestic spying (Defense) do count as government, but as the small part of the government that a Democracy is supposed to provide for it's people.  It just doesn't count as "Bad government" aka government actions we shouldn't be doing.

It's a fully coherent viewpoint whether anyone else agrees with it or not.

Doesn't really matter when you've got local officials tallying your votes and ready and willing to kick you out the minute you deviate from what you promised.

The problem with size are the categories that come with a larger size.

Team party original agenda could be described as Libertarian where it dealt with emphasis on the bill of rights. The problem with Tea Partiers is that the ideal of restoring the founding values translates to the majority as racism, slavery and so on. Of course anyone who is familiar with the Bill of Rights would see the ignorance in that kind of thought but that is the case.

The second issue is that restoration of the founding values go so strongly against the Liberal Democratic agenda that Tea Partiers seem to have more in common with Republican Conservatives.

It would be more accurate to call them Tea-Partiers but in reality they are (or originally were) Libertarians. (Not to be confused with Liberals)

I also use were because I haven't been keeping up with them what with Tunisia, Egypt, Russia, North Korea and so on going on =/

Just because they say its over, doesn't mean they'll stop doing it...

Does mean that there are consequences for breaking the law though.

The point was the statue was unconstitutional to begin with, in other words if they did continue to monitor folks by the ascribed methods of the patriot act they would put a lot in jeapordy.