The inspiration for the Tea Party is clear: Barack Obama.

But its leader increasingly looks like Sarah Palin.

The President represents the first real strategic threat to the Reagan coalition.  While many Republican strategist have warned the GOP of a demographic shift in the country, the idea of a changing electorate only became real, visible and three-dimensional with the election of Barack Obama.

His tenure in the White House is testimony to the evolving demographic trends in the United States.

The "blue collar" Reagan Democrats and traditional Republicans are, demographically speaking, heading into the sunset, being replaced in the electorate by young "ethnics" and the digital generation of urban, educated  whites who have tended to be Independents, but generally prefer the Democrats and Progressive positions on issues like public education reform, the environment and even gay marriage.

These shifts have given the GOP a medium and long term problem:  its Reagan-era voters are dying out faster than the GOP message is evolving to attract the changing face of America.

Ironically, the Republican Party was itself born from the remnants of another party, the Whig Party. 

As the Whigs lost support of the people, and some of its more radical leaders, for in part taking an ambiguous position on abolishing slavery, the radicals in the Whig Party, people such as Abraham Lincoln,  joined forces with like-minded Whigs the create the Republican Party with a clear anti-slavery philosophy at its core.

It is not that surprising, therefore, that the rump of the Reagan coalition is organizing for one last hurrah:  through the Tea Party.

The strained screams of "socialism" and "we want our country back" are a different way of saying:  "we are losing power in this country".  Smart Reagan-era operatives such as Dick Armey have used modern and effective strategies of communication and social mobilization to sop up disaffected Republicans, Independents and even Libertarians into a "movement".

Republicans hope this movement will effectively result in a higher Republican vote in  November, 2010.  There is the hope of continuing the Scott Brown Massachusetts upset victory with a rolling wave that could topple the Democratic majorities in one and possibly, dream of dreams, both houses of Congress.

When Tom Tancredo opened the Tea Party Convention with a full-throated scream to effectively reintroduce Jim Crow style "tests" for voters that "could not spell the word vote or say it in English", he was not just slurring African-Americans that fought and bled for the right to vote, but also Latinos that are making up an ever increasing number of the electorate and supposedly don't speak English (a dumb supposition at its core).

It is not surprising that Tancredo pronounced in his speech the beginning of a "counter-revolution".

And Sarah Palin, the darling of the right, the hope of the Tea Party movement, embodies this last gasp of the Reaganites.

Palin is an outsider to Washington and the ossified, retro-thinking Republican leadership in Congress.  (Think, Reagan from Alaska.)

She is "genuine" even as all other politicians seem programmed by PR people into bland, packaged talking points machines.  (Think, Reagan quips and charming delivery of a speech.)

And she does not actually pretend knowing anything - she is, like many people in the movement, angry and ready to talk action with no pretense of intellectual rigor or policy knowledge.  (Actually, Reagan was quite bright, a brilliant communicator and had tremendous integrity.)

Anger is her vessel and an angry Tea Party her natural home.  That is also where the Reagan connection breaks. 

Reagan, whether you agreed or not with his policy decisions, almost always appealed to an optimistic sense of America.  He never promoted hate or division in a cheap attempt to manipulate angry voters to support his position.

Tellingly, Palin pronounced that "America is ready for another Revolution".  She may be right.  But what kind of revolution remains to be seen.

Perhaps more obvious is the natural leader of the Tea Party Revolution:  Sarah Palin, of course.

The Christian Science Monitor reports:

As keynote speaker at the convention, Palin has undoubtedly given the tea party movement a new level of legitimacy and stature. Moreover, her decision to go ahead with the speech even as others pulled out suggested to many that she may be positioning herself as the de facto leader of the tea party movement.
Bolstering that view is Palin’s decision to turn down an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference later this month. The conference is widely considered a must-attend event for conservatives and Republicans lining up a run for office.

But associating herself so strongly with the tea party movement – she’s planning to headline tea party events in Searchlight, Nev., and Boston in the near future – could hurt Palin, too. For one, it could turn off independent and moderate voters, many of whom make up the 46 percent of Americans who view her unfavorably, according to a recent CNN poll.

Part of what makes the tea party movement controversial are the fringe views held by some activists. Former congressman Tom Tancredo stirred up controversy with his opening night speech Thursday when he said Mr. Obama was elected by "people who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English," and called for making civics literacy tests a prerequisite for voting. Such tests were used during Jim Crow to keep blacks from voting and were banned by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Mr. Tancredo later said he wasn’t targeting any particular group with his remark.

Tea party convention organizer Judson Phillips called Tancredo’s speech “fantastic.”

Some tea party activists, such as Lee Puckett, a commercial photographer from Birmingham, Ala., say they’re not sure Palin is smart to court the tea party because it could make her seem too far out of the mainstream.

Even if the tea party movement turns out not to be her natural constituency – if the fringe elements tarnish her broader appeal or the movement simply rejects the notion of a leader – Palin is for now its chief cheerleader.

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