What is the Tea Party? It’s an umbrella under which US political activists, supporters and politicians can sit, marking them as supporters of the Tea Party’s mission.

The mission, as printed, to campaign for lower taxes and a smaller state. It is, officially, concerned only with matters economic. In this regard it’s quite libertarian indeed – it leaves matters of ‘personal conscience’ to the individual, exactly where it should be.

Is that it? Not really. For the true significance you have to understand a bit about how US politics actually works.

The mechanism for political change is the US Open Primary system – very different from the British party system, where anyone – literally anyone – can use the Primary system to get themselves selected as either the GOP or Democratic candidate. Traditionally the ruling bodies of these two parties – the DNC and RNC – have been able to get ‘their guys’ in place without much difficulty.

So this is what Daily Kos and the Tea Party are all about – they’re about skipping the DNC and the RNC and talking directly to the grassroots registered voters, getting them involved with primaries and getting candidates in seats they actually want to vote for. Obama was the Grassroots guy. Hilary Clinton was the DNC’s choice. In the end the DNC did not get their way – Democrat voters did.

So, in many respects, just as the Democratic Party has been transformed by grassroots activism so the Tea Party seems to be having a similar effect on the GOP. There’s enough people involved with the Tea Party, or sympathetic to it, that it has a powerful effect on primaries.

My gut feeling on this – and that’s all it is – is that it really marks a continued polarisation of American Political Life. Grassroots movements don’t campaign for more moderation and compromise with the opposition – they demand the opposite. If both the GOP and the Democrat Party become entirely controlled by their respective grassroots then I think we can expect more extreme politicians of the kind we simply couldn’t even imagine here in the UK.

Is it a good thing? Well, it’s democratic and it’s empowering, but lost in the middle are the people who don’t think that you have to choose between Big Government/Small Church and Small Government/Big Church, and that’s when things start to get nausea inducing.

Much has been written and said about the Tea Party being ‘astroturf’. The true test of a Grassroots movement is whether or not it actually works. The Tea Party does – its supporters are very real, casting real votes and influencing real elections. It’s filled a niche that people wanted filling. The source doesn’t actually matter. It’s a real political movement and the fight against it has moved on from claims of ‘astroturf’ to general queries about the sanity of its candidates.

In reality, despite – or perhaps because of – the Tea Party’s focus entirely on tax and spending and indifference to everything else, it’s proven itself to be a handy vehicle for people with (what I consider to be) theocratic tendencies to bypass the GOP’s ruling body.

Part of me thinks that the rise of religion as an important part of the American Right Wing politician’s identity is a reaction to the general belief that liberal (in the British sense, not the American sense) economics are somehow “evil” and that it’s supporters lack morals. Certainly, that’s the problem faced by the British Coalition, who by merely taking spending levels back a few years are presented as representatives of Hell here on Earth, with no moral direction and no desire to achieve anything other than to make poor people suffer as much as possible.

By presenting themselves as people of strong faith and moral convictions this line of attack is somehow neutralised or circumvented. They just need to give people a reason to feel that voting for a particular candidate is a Good Thing To Do.

And that, really, is why the Tea Party ain’t my Cup of Tea. It needs one small change – that its candidates and politicians offer the people they will ultimately represent the same freedom of conscience that the Tea Party grants them, that they will never support Government interference in people’s private lives. That means letting people choose for themselves. It means not using the public money as a means to teach Christian propaganda to children, too.

Sadly that’s not going to happen. The Grassroots will see to it. The choice for Americans is between political and religious freedom OR economic freedom. They’re moving further and further away from the distinctly grassroots, non-mainstream dream of all three.