Is the 'Tea Party' a scam?

Here's a hint: Yes.

Now before you assume that I'm condemning neo-populism wholesale, know that I share much of its outrage and agree generally with many of its principles -- challenging do-nothing incumbents, governing by The People, raising the Constitution and the like.

My problem with the Tea Party, which holds its "convention" in Nashville as I write this, is that it's little more than recycled conservative ideology -- white, rural, anti-Obama.

What it wants to be -- indeed, what it should be -- is libertarian, even independent, but that won't happen until the "movement" stops circling the conservative bowl. Alas, when the former Mayor of Wasilla delivers the convention's keynote address tonight, she'll yank the shiny silver handle that flushes the ill-focused group's credibility.

Railing against "big government" doesn't pass the laugh test in this large and inarguably complex republic -- bureaucracy is a fact of modern life. If what Tea Partiers really want is a government that intrudes less into citizens' private lives then (for example) they'd oppose laws governing a woman's right to choose abortion, mandating one language for all citizens or imposing exclusively Christian doctrines on civil affairs.

Those positions are consistent with smaller government but find little favor in Nashville. We're a Christian nation of English-speaking Caucasians, just like the Founders, don'tcha know.

That kind of paranoid prattle smacks of "little pockets." It doesn't serve The People -- it insults us.

A return to Constitutional principles sounds good, at least on its face, but it falls apart in the hands of the Tea Party. Cherry-picking beneficiaries of the Bill of Rights is only part of the problem -- pro-Christian, anti-media, guns for farmers but not for city folk, etc.

Tea Partiers have an almost sentimental attachment to their anti-big-government spin on the Constitution. It's akin to considering helicopters sinful because they're not mentioned in the Bible.

Hey, you can look it up. (No need to re-administer the laugh test.)

Opposition, no matter how vocal, will carry a shallow "movement" only so far. If and when the Tea Party engages in substantive, real-world advocacy -- grounded in independent thought, divorced from conservative ideology -- I'll pay attention.

Until then, it's nothing but a scam for out-of-work neo-cons.