Says Tea Partiers "nuttily" believe Big Government extinguishing Freedoms

Daily Beast's Peter Beinart penned the following editorial post-election, (excerpt):

Behind the Democratic Wipeout

After Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey and a near-miss in upstate New York, conservatives have supposedly gotten their groove back. But it’s not the same old groove... what matters are deficits, bailouts and government spending. In other words, economics is the new culture war...

It’s no coincidence that former Majority Leader Dick Armey, the closest thing the “tea party” movement has to a national leader, is a libertarian...

The GOP’s emphasis on social issues played well in the South, but it hurt the party in the libertarian West, where Democrats have made major gains. It also contributed to the party’s near-extinction in the Northeast...

But although the right’s new libertarian thrust paid dividends yesterday, there may be problems down the road. The tea party crowd is ideologically hostile to Obama’s expansion of government; they genuinely (if nuttily) believe that large deficits and a larger welfare state are extinguishing their freedom. Most Americans, by contrast, don’t care all that much how large government is; they just want the economy to improve. If that happens by the time Obama runs for reelection, then the right’s anti-government crusade will likely strike swing voters as irrelevant and obnoxious.

Note - Beinart (photo - left) is best known to libertarians and conservatives as a frequent YouTube/NRO debater with his friend Jonah Goldberg from National Review.