First of all, where was the Tea Party prior to 2008? It wasn't like the Federal Government during the Bush adminstration was "small government".
Secondly, my personal opinion of the Tea Party will go up significantly if they continue to operate with gusto during the next Republican Presidential Administration and during the next Republican controlled Congress.
Until I see that, the Tea Party is just an anti-Obama, anti-Democrat, pro-Republican organization.
Do you consider that the next Republican administration / Rep congress is likely to devolve power and curtail public spending, or do you think they will centralize and increase spending?
Well, considering that the last Republican POTUS and GOP Congress centralized and increased spending, what do YOU think?
Yeah, OK, but I was asking about the NEXT one. I know it's convenient to keep looking back over our shoulders to find rocks to throw, but I was asking about the NEXT admin. And it was a question to xotoxi, not you. I'm quite well aware of your attitude to anyone who has attended or supports the tea parties ("racist jerkoffs" I believe you described them as - sorry if I'm misquoting you), so given that animosity I'm not sure that attempting to answer your question is worthwhile. However...
I didn't live in America during the last administration, so I don't know whether your summation is fair or not. I guess it could be.
Historically, the Republican Party has been viewed as, generally speaking, the party of lower taxes and smaller government. Whether this view is accurate based on the record of the Bush administration is an interesting question.
If the next Rep admin is consistent with traditional Rep policy, it would not be a surprise to see lower spending and smaller governement, in which case the aims of the Tea Party movement (by which I mean the original stated aims) would have been realized.
However, I foresee difficulty in cutting taxes because of the legacy of debt that has been taken on, both by the former administration and the current one. As such, while I supported the original aims of the tea party movement, I think that the debt load that has now been taken on needs to be serviced somehow. It would therefore not be a surprise to me to see a future Rep admin not making any significant tax cuts.
If this is the case, then the Tea Party movement should continue (unless of course all tea partyers are economic pragmatists). As it is, I suspect the tea party movement will continue for the time being as the GOP can use it as a stick with which to beat the Obama administration.
But if a Republican POTUS is in office in 3 or 7 years time and he/she fails to cut taxes, then I think the Tea Party movement will still die away because it is heavily aligned with the GOP. The Rep administration will find it difficult to cut taxes in view of the debt that needs to be serviced and this will be used as the excuse for the demise of the tea party movement. The truth of course will be that the GOP would make the tea parties disappear whether there was additional debt to service or not.
That's a rather fumbled, stream of consciousness answer, because I had not really thought about it before (hence my question to xotoxi, who seemed to have considered it a bit more thoroughly).
Either way, I hope that answers your question about my views, assuming you were actually interested in the opinion of a jackoff racist.