Tea Party: True Believers or Fifth Column

Michael Sean Winters of National Catholic Reporter ran a series this week on his Distinctly Catholic Blog about the Tea Party. Here is my comment on his last installment:

The Tea Party is a multi-headed beast, however certain factions, like the Tea Party Express, are made up of the most conservative Republicans - socially, economically and culturally - and they are funded by David Koch through a variety of means. While some factions have no desire to be tagged as organs of the Republican Party, such as the Tea Party Patriots, the TPE desires to control it - either because they think that their ideas will win with voters or because they are trying to discredit the entire movement. The jury is out whether they are true believers or Libertarian Party fifth columnists. I suspect that they may be a little of both and that they have been successful because there is a perceived leadership vacuum in the Republican Party and they had the funding to step in.