The origination of the TEA Party began, IMO, as musiclady stated...Santelli's rant on the floor of the stock exchange.
That and nothing that happened somewhere in 2005 got me and another 800K people get off our a$$es and march down Independence Ave NW in Sept. 2009.
And causation has nothing to do with it. Because anybody who votes against the status quo today is, in effect, a member of the TEA Party, whether they know it or not.
That's the beauty of it. it's totally abstract.
According to Rush, it began with FReepers, according to Ron Paul, it began with the remnant of his last Presidential campaign remaining politically active.
In effect, it's disaffected people not happy with the government. It began as a loosely-knit non-partisan thing protesting taxation and morphed into a conservative thing, then sort of into a SoCon kind of a thing.
Since it has no leadership and no cohesiveness it can be anything to any one of those 800K people that you marched with says that it is, and each and everyone of those 800K people can say that it isn't anything someone else says that it is, because it isn't that to them.
Then there's the added factor that you induct membership by conscription
"... anybody who votes against the status quo today is, in effect, a member of the TEA Party, whether they know it or not", inflating the ranks beyond reality. When I voted for Mitt Romney I was voting against the status quo (Barack Obama), but that doesn't make me a member of anything other than the GOP.
Fidel Castro had a line about everyone who went to work in his Cuba was a member of his "revolution". Mom and Dad worked because we needed to eat and pay the rent, but according to Fidel, hey were part of his revolution.
I get the whole thing. I just don't think it is very effective or as successful as it thinks that it is.
The TEA party thing, IMO, is more a marketing thing than anything else. Those 800K you marched with did not create a "new" polity, it just re marketed an existing one.
The Party is those "radical conservatives" Reagan talks about in his memoirs. they are Falwell's Silent Majority, JimRob's FReepers and Ron Paul's Revolution with a new image.