My Beef with the Tea Party Movement

I posted the following on a comment thread on a friend's Facebook page and thought I should share it here. Feel free to agree or flame away. You're not going to change my mind:

My beef with the Tea Party movement is it was started by Libertarian-minded people with the right intentions, but then hijacked by the establishment GOP for political gain. The GOP now favors corporate welfare and imperialist "world policing". In fact, the only difference between the Republicans and Democrats now is what they want to spend the money on. That they have any right to tax and inflate away our earnings is a foregone conclusion.

I am an advocate of a Constitution-sized federal government (MUCH smaller than what we've had for the past 100 years) with lassiez faire capitalism, no Federal Reserve, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. I would have to have been born before 1900 to have any of that...