Ron Paul and the TEA Party ?

[Ted King]

You see, DaveS, you did hijack this thread. Getting back to the OP, libertarian thought seems to fall fairly strongly along two branches - economic libertarianism and civil libertarianism. Tea Partiers stress the former and hardly at all the latter (except for gun rights). Ron Paul sort of straddles both branches of libertarian thought much more than suits most Tea Partiers. Ron Paul is also much more rigorous about consistently applying economic libertarianism to government than many Tea Partiers - a lot of Tea Partiers tend to think that reducing government is a good idea, except for the stuff that they like.