Convention attendees kneel in prayer at the National Tea Party Convention.
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And that's fine with Joe Conard, a Tea Partyer in Scottsdale, Ariz., wearing wire-rim glasses and toting a sign that says STOP SOCIALISM NOW--NO GOVERNMENT HEALTH BILL. Conard is fed up with political parties and has no interest in starting another one. "Don't call me a Republican. I am an independent thinker against Big Government," he said. "The Tea Party movement isn't a party at all. I'd like politics without parties."
George Washington wanted the same thing, but history went in another direction. It gave us Democrats and Republicans, and we're likely to be living with them for a long time to come. What the Tea Party movement tells us, though, is that the hold those traditional parties have over politics is never as tight as their leaders would like to believe, and that in times of trouble--times like these--both R's and D's are well advised to be afraid. Very afraid.