What the Tea Party Wants

The freshmen House Republicans are widely considered to owe their office to the Tea Party movement. Funded and promoted by Wall Street for investment purposes, the party has never considered itself beholden to their benefactors. CNBC's Rick Santelli launched the movement during a broadcast lament about the interference of government in the Free Market. The movement was funded by the Koch Brothers while Rupert Murdoch's media became the movement's public standard bearer, coalescing widely disparate individuals into a "Party". Although the Tea Party is actually a composite of libertarians, anarchists (more on this), and the disenfranchised, the political stripes of the movement's benefactors lead to the natural inclusion of the group into the Republican Party as Michael Steele sought to build on the "Big Tent" strategy. (Wall Street Journal Opinion, May 2, 2009, "How Republicans Can Build a Big-Tent Party")

What the Republican Party did not know was that the Tea Party is not a group of "follower". Much of their motives for becoming political activists are antithetical to the Republican Party that has absorbed them. Today's Republican foundation is scratching its collective head and asking "What do they want?"

In a word: "Revenge"

To their credit, some of the freshmen Tea Party House Republicans do not want to be re-elected (although they will gladly keep their jobs if that is the way things work out). Their self-seen mission is to exact vengeance upon Washington, Wall Street, the majority of the United States who they disagree with, and the world.

They will work to see that the country defaults on debt and budget obligations in order to realize that revenge. Washington has always been seen by them as the "enemy". They do not want to compromise themselves and become career politicos. Wall Street, too, has "robbed" the group's labor while accruing massive profits. A financial collapse would "serve them right". The majority of US voters have long ignored the isolated libertarian views of most Tea Party members, preferring a stable society with enforced rules over the independent anarchy views of the average Tea Party adherent. Finally, their interconnection to the"world" has always been outside the understanding of the angry Tea Party philosophy. To most, there are two kinds of foreigner - those who have attacked "us" and those who want to attack "us".

What does this mean to the investor, the citizen, the President, the Republican leadership? It means "Uh oh! The kid found the loaded pistol."