This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, February 27, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The Low Tax, Low Spending Coalition that forms the Tea Party Movement

should be working this year to consolidate the

gains of the 2010 election cycle.

That from American Spectator Senior Editor John Fund, Bund argues that the Tea Partiers are deepening

their influence within government in a variety of ways.

We spoke February 16th.

The Tea Party movement had great electoral success in 2010 and one of the concerns really from the very beginning of the

T-party movement was this idea of how do we keep this odd coalition from

fracturing. Do you have any particular thoughts about how that ought to occur?

Well, what you find in American politics is American politics is a series of movements that spring up and challenge the establishment and they either

eventually go away or they become integrated into the establishment.

They become a part of a new establishment. We saw that with the feminist

movement in the 1960s, the anti-war movement. We are seeing it now with the Tea Party,

which is I think for want of a better word, slowly becoming a wing of the Republican Party,

sort of the anti-government wing of the Republican Party.

We're seeing that played out.

There are fewer demonstrations now because the immediate political goal of blocking Barack Obama's

agenda was achieved in 2010 with the election of a conservative House of Representatives and

a much reduced Democratic majority in the Senate.

Now I think it's moved to consolidating some of those gains.

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