I don't know if it is a hot topic or not but I have no idea what the Tea Party is, aside from the historical one where people threw tea off of a boat to protest high taxes.
A woman my mom's age that I saw last week said that she had been out of town in D.C. for a Tea Party rally (or something). I told her I had no idea what that was, and she just said it was politics.
What is it? Do they have candidates? Or is it more of a group that is trying to change policies/laws?
It's groups of people working to encourage government to change their spending-all-our-money ways. There's more to it, of course, but that's the basic idea. It's not an official political party, just random people who think government needs to stop spending and listen to the people.
Robin, I had been wondering about them in more detail as well. Thought this was a comprehensive review of the moevement, the makeup of people who identify themselves as supporters, etc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement
Wiki is always a good place to start, even though I would not cite them in my legal briefs, its often the first place I will go to get an overview of a subject!
It mostly confirmed my suspicion that the Tea Party is just the self-labeling of those who didn't vote for Obama (i.e. conservative Republicans). I suspect it is growing as those Obama voters that went cold on him start to identify with that sentiment.
