Liz Sidoti: Tea Party is stirring things up – but for how much longer?

WILL the conservative Tea Party coalition, the latest political phenomenon to sweep across the United States, become a society-changing movement influencing elections and beyond?

Retirees, stay-at-home mothers, small-business owners, corporate executives and everyone in between – many political neophytes who aren't hardcore ideologues – are using the latest technology to come together and vent their frustrations about their country and plot to install a new group in charge of the government.

They formed a loose network of grass-roots groups to speak out against President Barack Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress. They held their first national Tea Party convention over the weekend at a hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. And they are already having some impact on American politics.

The big unknown is whether their power is truly transformative. What's more certain is, well, the uncertainty.

"We are people who understand something wrong is going on in this country, and we want to change it," says Dan Garner, a married 40-year-old sales representative from nearby Carthage who is new to politics. Like so many others, he's had enough. "The core thing is a loss of individual liberty."

No-one is quite sure what to make of this leaderless morass of people, born not even a year ago in communities from coast to coast. But everyone seems to want a piece of it. Republicans are trying to co-opt it. Democrats are trying to marginalise it. And people with personal aspirations – whether financial or political – are trying to take advantage of it.

"America is ready for another revolution, and you are a part of this," Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, told the convention on Saturday. "You all have the courage to stand up and speak out."

Many Tea Party disciples view the former Alaska governor – also an author, a Fox News analyst and a potential 2012 presidential candidate – as their de facto leader. But she repeatedly dismissed that notion, saying: "The Tea Party movement is not a top-down operation. It's a ground-up call to action that is forcing both parties to change the way they're doing business, and that's beautiful."

In many ways, the coalition – decidedly conservative and libertarian, but otherwise diverse – should have been expected to emerge as power shifted in Washington. The US has a long history of citizens rising up against people in power, particularly in tough times such as recession.

That Tea Parties formed in US living-rooms morphed into the latest political phenomenon so quickly after Obama took office is a testament to the power of the internet and the changes in a country that's come to rely heavily on it.

People who once thought no-one shared their views now can quickly find out they're part of a mob – and collectively turn their words into action.

"For so many years, I have felt alone," says Carolyn Scott, 71, of Nashville, a retired schoolteacher and a grandmother of six who fears the country's debt will crush the next generation. Wearing a white "Freedom Czar" baseball cap, she adds: "Now I see people like me standing up and speaking out. We've found each other and we've found our voice, and we are determined to fight for our freedoms."

The Tea Party phenomenon is the conservative libertarian answer to Obama and majority Democrats.

But it's finding that creating a movement is messy. And that its power only goes so far.

The coalition is divided over everything, it seems, except the need for limited government, less spending and an end to Obama's policies. It claimed credit – probably far too much – for Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown's surprise win for the Senate seat held by the late Edward Kennedy last month. But several Tea Party-backed candidates came up short in Illinois primary races last week.

Some activists say the movement takes its name from an acronym for "taxed enough already". Others insist the name is drawn from the 1773 Boston Tea Party by American colonists protesting about taxation without representation. In 1773, about 200 colonists, incensed that the British Crown was demanding payment of duties on cargoes of tea in three British ships, stormed the ships in Boston harbour and threw the boxes of tea overboard.

Like any coalition, it includes people at the far ends of the political spectrum pushing their extreme ideology, and it probably also includes people whose anger is actually rooted in distrust of the country's first black president.

But many who call themselves Tea Partiers are simply real people with real concerns who have real voices and want to force real change.

And, as history has shown, politicians of all political stripes ignore such uprisings at their own peril.