This was a very limited issue and I think it was poorly handled.
I agree that the Tea Party movement is very important - I went to that first great march on DC and it was wonderful.
I think one of the problems is that the movement as a whole is having an identity crisis. I liked it because most of the people in it seemed to be social and cultural conservatives dedicated to getting big government out of our lives. But it almost seemed to me that this focus was lost in the debt ceiling debate, where we had a few people using it as a means of scoring symbolic points for themselves rather than looking at the whole and planning a unified strategy that would really achieve the ultimate goal.
This has always been a danger with conservatives, for some reason, probably because we are better educated and more independently minded than the left. But it can also paralyze us and marginalize us, particularly since it tends to split people off into tiny groups (or eventually, 3rd parties) grouped around their solution to some specific, temporary issue. We lose the ability to present a united front defending and extending the overall program, and our disarray results in a loss of our initiative, a loss of energy and the creation of distrust and hostility among our forces.
Perhaps those who are studying and rediscovering the ideas of America's Founders will realize that it was the Founders' passion for individual liberty which motivated them. Their power is in the strength and appeal of their ideas.
Contrast that with the collectivis and redistributionist ideology of those who must use the coercive power of government to impose their will on others, and we can see why such persons' response to a "community organizer" brought us to where we are today--on the brink of loss of freedom, opportunity, and prosperity. Such is the way of all nations who have turned to the coercive power of government as the "solution" to problems.
Hopefully, in 2012, those who love liberty more than slavery will coalesce into an effective power to defeat those who reject the principles of the Declaration of Independence and restrictions on power provided by "the People's" U. S. Constitution.