The Tea Party Are Not Civil Libertarians, Okay?

Toward the end of a blog post about an apparently-dead-or-at-least-comatose NSA proposal to, I dunno, surveil the Internet more than the government already does, Kevin Drum tosses this line into an attempt to analyze the partisan breakdown of the issue:

Obviously the GOP base is inclined to think that anything Obama opposes must be good, and they certainly supported the increased surveillance powers that George Bush gave to NSA. On the other hand, tea partiers tend to be suspicious of this kind of Big Brotherish monitoring.

But the problem is, there's just no truth to this! At no point has the Tea Party in any noticeable way made any sign that it opposes the security state! They love the security state, as well they should, as they're just the very most conservative of conservative Republicans. Because if you're against surveillance, you must be for the people we want to surveil, which means you support the Islamofascists in their efforts to take over America and impose Sharia law here. Of all the many, many things to mind about the mainstream media over the past few years, perhaps the one I mind the most is the way absolutely no one challenges the assertion that the Tea Party is about libertarianism. It just is not. True, the movement is in some ways inspired by Ron Paul's quasi-libertarian campaign from 2008, but they've taken all of the least libertarian parts of his platform and ditched the parts that make one kind of almost admit that he's an actual civil libertarian. It's just one great big lie that the Tea Party opposes "Big Brother" government surveillance programs. It's just a lie.