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Yesterday, fewer than 1,000 people (combined) turned out to the four Tea Party events in Delaware, which by all accounts were well-planned and promoted. Included on that list was the Wilmington event with my friends Charlie Copeland and Pete DuPont, which according to the paper drew maybe 250 people.

In the past few days, Erick Erickson of RedState and CNN, who is arguably the leader of the online (and increasingly offline) right, left the Tea Party, saying:

The tea party movement, one year later, is descending into a self-parody of infighting, money making, claims of national leadership, protests, unions, federations, amalgamations, etc. The groups have been so busy organizing themselves to distinguish themselves from each other that the core message is gone and media and left have been able to seize on the discord and paint a picture of the tea party movement as something other than it is and what we all know it to be — concerned Americans.

This has nothing at all to do with actual tea party activists. Let me be clear. I do not want to nor intend to slight the activists who care and show up with their hand painted signs, sometimes risking violence against themselves by the left and ridicule by the media.

But I have a simple message for them all — it is time to stop calling yourselves tea party activists and start calling yourselves concerned Americans.

The issues that incite, enrage, and organize the men and women of this nation to leave their jobs to go protest the size, scope, and direction of government are American concerns. The state of the nation, the growth of government, moving from creeping socialism to a full sprint to socialism — these are concerns shared across the board.

It’s important that the “movement” and the organizations themselves not become more important than the issues. Look, I’ll admit I was never a Tea Party guy. I thought it was very disingenuous to start this protest movement against spending AFTER the Republican fiscal train wreck left town. I figured that as a loyal party guy, I had supported that era of GOP Washington and it would be bad form to start to “rise up” after the fact.

That doesn’t mean I agree with the tack we’ve taken as a nation. I have a solid track record on TARP, the “stimulus,” HCR and more. We are spending ourselves into nonexistence, and have reached a point where the entire federal government is unsustainable as an entity.

But the constant banter AGAINST actions in Washington is falling on deaf ears. We have to start to offer a way out that balances the budget and begins to rein in the spending. That’s why Paul ran is such a rockstar right now. Not because his plan was perfect, but because he offered a plan. We have to offer solutions that make government work, instead of shouting on the roadside and hoping that the federal government will disappear.

Limited government will be achieved by slowly moving in that direction with a committed effort over a generation or two, just as the progressive movement vastly concentrated authority in the federal government from the New Deal through HCR. We need to begin to move that power back to the states and to local governments. Central planning has never worked, and a quick glance at the federal balance sheet will tell you that it’s not working here, either.

But, simply put, we have to pay for the government we have. Social Security, Medicare, interest on the debt, those things are not going away any time soon. Those things must be paid for. We must balance the budget as we begin to roll back the size of the central government. And without a doubt, we need to do that through fundamental tax reform. We need to increase taxes on things we want less of, like carbon pollution, and decrease taxes on things we want more of, like work, savings and investment.

But we need to put the Tea away and begin creating constructive plans that recognize the reality of where we stand in 2010. Put down the platitudes and pick up a pencil.

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