It's incoherent to you because, as I've explained more than once, you can't wrap your mind around the idea of actual decentralized activism. The idea that a group can develop a set of ideas and positions without some leadership class shoving it into their heads with a funnel. I've run into this before, in an unrelated discussion, where the term "conspiracy" keeps getting shoved into the discussion. There MUST be a master organizer to have organization! On this premise much of liberal politics rests, but that's another story.

You keep mashing "tea party movement," a set of ideas and positions, together with small groups like "Tea Party Nation." There's a reason I don't capitalize "Tea Party." The Left would love it if this movement coalesced into a formal political entity, with an identified representative or leader they could shitstorm. Alinsky had no rules to deal with an actual popular movement - he always assumed the popular movement would be on their side of the line, and "the Man" would be on the other side.

I will be the first to admit that there are tea party types who have gotten ideas about becoming the Official Tea Party, and Lord knows there are Republican politicians dying to become the "face" of an organized Tea Party, but that would be disaster, and most conservatives know it. Real conservatism is about individuals, not rigid organizations.

Do you understand yet why I keep bringing up the polls? Newsweek aside, we are NOT "all socialists now," and much of the problems the Democrats are having stem from the assumption that we were.

Your last sentences indicate you're getting there.