The top five misconceptions about tea partiers

4. Tea Partiers Are All Libertarians

This is the opening pitch to any young Tea Party attendee, a revealing attempt at finding common ground. The libertarian label accounts for the anger at overspending under the Bush administration and gives the movement a modern-sounding spin, recasting the Obama opposition into a clear-cut fight between individualism and collectivism. By contrast, social conservatism has an ideologically inconvenient collectivist streak embedded in it, particularly an intrusion of the government into questions of sexual and reproductive freedom. Past icons, like libertarian Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, couldn’t have passed the party purity measures pushed by some conservatives. And current Tea Party icons like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh enforce the social and fiscal conservative straightjacket—they embrace the idea that there are no enemies on the right and RINOs on the left. Accordingly, they are hugely popular with conservatives but kryptonite to independents and centrists. Libertarians are given plenty of lip service, but they are not trusted with leadership roles in the conservative populist movement to date.