This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, May 3rd, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown. The choices that will keep the Tea Party movement cohesive and focused on cutting the size and scope of the federal government may not be obvious and

rise above the designation of historical footnote the T-partiers may have to

embrace some new thinking about what limits government. John Samples, author of the new Cato book,

The Struggle to Limit Government, explains.

You would maintain that the Tea Party Coalition itself

is one that is worth maintaining

to the extent that it's a group that is

dedicated itself to cutting the size and scope of the federal government.

Well I think the great interesting thing about the Tea Party is that they have organized around that theme and have left behind some of the other ideas that were certainly part of Republican Party and the Bush administration,

particularly for the Republicans after 97.

And, you know, in terms of actually having an effect on politics,

there is no other game in town.

There is nobody else that I see that has organized itself to have an effect on elections and

policy that favors limited government. So to the extent that these people are

working toward something valuable that is reducing the size and scope of the federal government.

Why, what advice would you have for them in terms of maintaining that coalition for over the long term?

Well, they've already taken some steps, I think, that are good ones toward that.

One is that they have decided to focus on what they agree on which is that the

federal government is too big federal spending seems to be out of control and

needs to be brought under control and they've decided to omit things that they might disagree about or that they might disagree about with most Americans, namely the sort of social

conservative or the issues that we think of as highly divisive issues that have

come to be highly divisive issues in American politics.

...