@LostInParadise Most Republicans are communitarians, not libertarians. George W Bush even called himself a communitarian under his ‘compassionate’ conservatism platform. Most conservative politicians do support legislation that they feel will benefit the community with their antidrug, antiabortion and antigay stances. Conservative politicians also tend to support an interventionalist stance when it comes to foreign affairs, and claim to be promilitary (to the extreme). These are all communitarian ideas to me, not libertarian. The major difference between those who classify themselves as liberals or conservatives is that while they’re both essentially communitarian in nature, they go about their ideas of communitarianism differently.
Communitarianism means community before individual rights, while libertarianism is pretty much about objectivism. Communitarianism does not by itself mean socialism, communism, collectivism, etc but it does mean community first. In theory you could be a dictator in a right wing aristocracy, and still be a communitarian. The term Tea Party ‘libertarian’ is a political misnomer. Basically the Tea Party was made up of frustrated Republicans, which made up about 65% of their membership, and conservative independents who were angry that a Democrat got elected. It was the same thing when Clinton got elected, when many right wing militias started popping up out of the woodwork. In fact some researchers had predicted a Tea Party (or similar right wing element) type of scenerio if Obama got elected, and bingo it did.
One note on the Tea Party, there are different factions where some are more libertarian while others are made up of hardcore conservatives. The Tea Party is not a centralized movement either, so who knows what the agenda is of each particular movement. When I was on sodahead I got into a nasty debate with one vocal Tea Partier, but this guy was a hardcore conservative. I told him that if he wasn’t just another frustrated Republican who joined the Tea Party out of hatred for the Democrats, than why don’t you just support Ron Paul. He told me he would never support a closet liberal.