TEA Party: A Fourth Leg For Conservatives' Big Table

On Feb. 17, most of the leaders of the traditional conservative movement gathered in Arlington, Va., to plan strategy, and issued a statement of conservative principles. However, the conservative movement is rapidly changing and significantly expanding because of the addition of millions of Tea Partyers. The Tea Party movement shares certain key interests of the conservative movement, yet it is a phenomenon independent from the conservative movement. That's a good thing. The conservative movement started life in the 1950s as a two-legged stool of limited government/fiscal restraint and national defense. Then, in the second half of the 1970s, a third leg was added to the stool: traditional-values conservatives. Now the Tea Party people add a fourth leg, and the movement sits at a large-sized table. The Tea Party movement brings millions of new people to the political arena who have not previously been involved. They bring more energy, enthusiasm and excitement to politics than we've seen in the last 100 years...read more