Baron Von PWN wrote:why do people act like the tea party is different from the republicans? show me an independent tea party representative and I'll give your rhetoric some credence. Otherwise they are just a different flavor of republican.
It is truly a tragedy the information has been so smeared and distorted.  Suppose you can thank the PimpDavid party for that.  Tea Partiers are mostly a quasi-Libertarian and fiscally conservative breed, and as you may know many have tendencies to be socially liberal in a few areas.  I likewise have always had a hard time understanding why it was that people who hated the Bush Republicans of 2000-2006, 2008 so much seem to hate the Tea Party even more, and why they don't understand that we are fixing the problem that we agreed with the Democrats were problems and "fixing" the Republican party.  I eventually came to realize that some Democrats, especially the Progressives, just do not like anything that is not the same as they are.  
Largely, the Tea Party was born out of Republican and Independent voters (even Democrats make up 10% of the Tea Party) who did not like Bush or the Republicans of that era, and we were motivated mostly against Bushes atrocious spending levels and deficits, but for me you can throw the Patriot act and the Iraq war in there, which is when I learned very quickly that I was NOT a Republican.  Bush did the bailouts, Obama did the stimulus package and spent the deficits (investments  

) even higher, and surprise surprise the Tea Party exploded in support, and here we are today....  The more debt we take on, and the resulting higher the gas prices and food prices go, and the more money we print, and the more trillion dollar deficits we run and the more government grows, the bigger the Tea Party will grow, and this is a promise.
Let me ask you though, if you truly believe there is no difference between Republicans and Tea Partiers, why was there such a huge, ugly fight over the balanced budget amendment within the Republicans party, if they are all "just Republicans"?  Why did the Tea Party wing of the House vote with the honest Democrats against the Patriot Act, while the shit Bushy Republicans joined the Boot-licking Obama Democrats to support the Patriot Act and keep it around so we could get NDAA through?  There are plenty of examples, but I'm confident you know about these 2 off the top of your head.  You are a pretty smart person.  How do you explain these real differences within the Republican party, to the point where you have Republicans cursing the Tea Party and threatening them?
As for the Independent TP'ers, some have run independent, and we will see more run in 2012, along with a couple Tea Party Democrats.  It's not a stretch when you consider what a blue-dog democrat is.  The reason there are not more Independent Tea Party leaders, is because a third party candidates have not done particularly well historically.  We don't have to reinvent our own system over 20 years, we can just run in Primaries and Caucus against Republicans.  There is no mystery here.  Although in 2010 the Tea Party did win third party elections, and came very close to winnin in many more.  Joe Miller, Alaska, actually beat Murkowski in the Primary there, and elitist Murkowski was forced to run as a wright in (which she won).  
For you, I will point out any Independent Tea Party candidates who run in 2012, and you know I will be 100% supporting the Tea Party Democrats who run.