What is the Tea Party?

There is so much said about this that it would seem that the answer would be obvious.  The Samuel Jackson claim that the Tea Party is racist is a starting point, I suppose, into that aspect of the movement.  It appears that Jackson's claim is mostly about opposition to Obama.  Somehow, race has been thrust into the discussion, but a reading of a this Tea Party document reveals nothing about race.   The Tea Party Patriots endorsed that document, but the Democrats refused to sign it.  Not all Republicans endorsed the document either, but endorsed the Pledge for America instead.  Thus, the Tea Party is not what you would call a unanimous movement of either one of the parties, but the Tea Party does tend to follow conservative principles.

Who's in the Tea Party?

The Tea Party movement's membership includes notable Republican politicians Ron Paul, his son Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Dick Armey, and Michele Bachmann. Joshua Green has said the elder Paul is not the Tea Party's founder, or its culturally resonant figure, but has become the "intellectual godfather" of the movement as many now agree with his long-held beliefs.  In July 2010, Michele Bachmann formed the Tea Party Congressional Caucus, which now contains 66 members .

 Ron Paul ran for President, his son Rand is in the Senate.  Sarah Palin was the Vice Presidential nominee in 2008.  Dick Armey was a former congressman from Texas.  Michelle Bachmann is a congresswoman from Minnesota who ran for the Republican nomination for President in 2012.   Yet none of these people clearly define what the Tea Party actually is, in terms of its leadership and principles, as far as I can determine.

If the principles are dedicated to the US Constitution, then the document mentioned above, The Contract From America, adheres to this fairly closely, in my opinion.  But this is not what you'd call a founding document, nor a party platform to run on in an election.  It doesn't have universal support for that, although the Republican Party tends to follow it loosely, but there's plenty of opposition to it.

Here's a list of Tea Party politicians.   Some of these names are questionable, in my opinion.  In the recent run off election, Ted Cruz v. David Dewhurst, this list shows both as being Tea Partiers.  But the Dewhurst claim is not believable.

As best as I can tell, the Tea Party is not well defined, neither in terms of its leadership, nor its organization, nor its principles.  It is a loose amalgamation of various personalities with generally small government ideas.  It not organized according to race, nor racial doctrines.  There is no clear leader amongst the group.  If anything unites it, it may well be the strong opposition to President Obama, and his signature legislative achievement, known colloquially as ObamaCare.

Update:

A significant omission was a discussion about foreign policy.

My own impression would be that they should follow the principles of Ronald Reagan in terms of committing US forces overseas.  Reagan tended to avoid large commitments and entanglements.  His general approach was peace through strength.  The Tea Party should avoid Bush-like neo-Conservative policies which have cost the nation dearly and divided the nation bitterly.

The Tea Party positions on these issues are not well-defined as they are on domestic issues.

Walter Russell Mead has an article discussing the Tea Party on this subject.  But you have to be a subscriber to read all of it, and I'm not.  The first part is published, though, and it is too general to offer an opinion.