might have less to do with any principled belief in the limits of government and more to do with fear of what this will do to their own entitlements.

That's so much bullshit.
Just another elitist, willfully ignorant fool who hates that the proles are not listening to their intellectual and political betters.

"Might", huh?
Yeah, and that tool might be intelligent.

As I've seen no indication of either "might", I'm gonna have to go with "Not" in both instances.

I have trouble taking Dalmia seriously. His article based a large part of his thesis on a TPM post "Keep The Guvmint Out Of My Medicare." If you follow the links you'll find out one person at a local town hall meeting carried a sign with that message. It's not even certain that person was a Tea Party member.

Then Dalmia cites a Bloomberg poll which displays some truly odd results, including the conclusion that "More than six in 10 say it [the Tea Party] advocates government based on Christian principles." First there is no single Tea Party, and I seriously doubt 60% of all Tea Party members agree with that statement.

Another good one: "Tea Party supporters are more likely than other voters to be white, married, 55 and older, and call themselves born-again Christians." Again, this conflicts with overall patterns shown across the county via multiple news stories & blog posts. Given that the president of the polling company finds Tea Party followers indistinguishable from Republicans, I'm not surprised their survey conforms to myths about the movement. Note that the Bloomberg article doesn't link to the raw data, so we can't check the cross-tabs. I would love to that data, and examine their methodology.

Oddly enough, the only Medicare issues the poll-takers actually quote show that 53% would consider raising the age for Medicare benefits, and 58% would consider the same for Social Security benefits, in contradiction to Dalmia's claim.

Color me skeptical.

Casey,

Once people are dependent you have to do your cutting carefully and slowly.

And Eric,

I share the same fears. Sometimes people really are out to get you.

We'll just have to hold their feet to the fire. And at this point, while not wanting anyone to enforce a belief that America is good (Or any other belief) I'd like a resolution that America is innocent until proven guilty -- or at least as innocent as any other country and more innocent than most. I'm so tired of specious textbooks foisted on my kids...

"Once people are dependent you have to do your cutting carefully and slowly."

Agreed. Absolutely. And I did ignore Eric's other point, that social cons might try to preempt or take over the Tea Party movement. This is a legitimate concern. Certainly the Country Club Republicans would love to either trivialize or eliminate the Tea Partys.

Eric's last line reminds me of an important point; there's been a lot of ink spilled over "big" government. That label depends on context. I would imagine most political conservatives, libertarians, and independents prefer a strong, local government; something at the town or city level.

It's the Federal government which usually causes the problems the last century, so perhaps we should stop talking about "big" government, and start talking about o'erweening Federal government instead.

...And tell any would-be movement hijackers to bugger off...

" carefully and slowly."

Whiggishly.

I am a bit more sympathetic to the the notion of family values than I understand you to be. Families are useful for aggregating more productive properties. A farm. A business. Even - shudder -- a political dynasty: Kennedy, Bush, Clinton and now Gawd help us Megan McCain. Starting from the premise that families have a functional value, what consequential structures do you consider useful towrd exploiting that value?

Casey- Shikha Dalmia is a woman- it is an Indian name. Her ancestors probably came from either of the north-western Indian states of Rajasthan or Gujarat.