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I have trouble viewing the Tea Party as a movement other than one based on a series of protests by groups of angry people who hate/dislike taxes, government spending, universal health care, the President, and their skewed and/or misled view of socialism.
The common thread that holds these people together seems to be these things. Because they're all grassrootsy, they eschew leadership and attempts at being co-opted by Republicans. So what holds them together is their dislike for things.
The problem with this is that it allows these racist fringe elements do their thing without any real unified or otherwise official repercussions from the movement itself---partly because nothing is official. If a Tea Partier wants Obama out of office for being an Indonesian Muslim baby-eating witchdoctor terrorist, then what's stopping him or her from saying so? There is no leadership, there is no definitive structure, there is no manifesto.
Or is there?
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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