Well, the tea party boiled over last week in Nashville and the delegates to their first national convention, for the most part, seemed middle-class folk having a good time hoping to free themselves from the corral of government.

Sarah Palin, the pin-up girl of the far-right wing, got the crowd in a jolly mood when she jabbed President Obama with a wicked grin, asking, “How’s all that hopey, changey stuff working for ya?”

She seemed to touch the spirit of the gathering in her role as folksy voice of the eternal verities: “The best of America can be found in places where patriots are brave enough and free enough to be able to stand up and speak up, and where small businesses grow our economy one job at a time — and, folks, like Reagan, we know that America is still that ‘shining city on a hill.’ Tea party nation, we know that there is nothing wrong with America that together we can't fix as Americans.”

Isn’t that sweet and hopeful? Who could be against that? Who could be against Sarah? She’s so cute with such a neat figure, down-to-earth nice with just enough devilment to make her interesting and authentic.

Some sour notes were struck. The opening speaker called President Obama a "committed socialist ideologue" who was elected because "we do not have a civics, (Jim Crow) literacy test before people can vote."

Former U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told the 600 or so delegates, "People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House."

WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah trotted out the “birther” claim that Obama wasn't really born in the United States. But such grandstanding had others worried. Dick Armey among them. The former House Majority Leader said such extremist views would falsely color the movement as a bunch of kooks.

Though a handful of delegates were quoted on camera asserting that the president is a Marxist, the general mood seemed to be a frustrated nostalgia for a better world they once had and dream of recapturing.

And why not protest? At home and abroad we face seemingly intractable problems that weren’t there when Reagan was president or, for that matter, during eight years of peace and prosperity presided over by Bill Clinton.

You can’t say much for the eight years after Clinton but two wars Obama did not start, and the accumulated financial mistakes of Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations are now unfairly attributed to the incumbent.

Obama is in the unhappy position of the drunk who, when asked how his bed happened to catch on fire, answered: “I don’t know. It was on fire when I got into it.”

The urgent national mission is to put out the fire, clean up and set things straight as they ought to be. Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, was the first fire marshal, and then the Obama crew succeeded in suffocating the fire.

But ideas for cleaning up and setting things straight were not to be found in Sarah Palin’s speech, and neither did the convention panels put together and publish a “Tea Party Manifesto.”

It is for the time being a protest without a point.

Aside from the snarling, barely disguised racism of the bitter, defeated former Congressman Tancredo, there were no apocalyptic visions of citizens storming the White House as the French did the Bastille.

Not much of anything came out of the convention. It was just a party of like-minded people who laughed at the same jokes and booed the same villains.

Leaders of the self-described leaderless movement recognize that rebels without a cause eventually become boring and nothing could be worse for a protest movement than to bore the country.

The leadership is organizing a bottoms-up declaration of principles, a “Contract FROM America,” a seeding of the grassroots in hope that from many frustrated voices some kind of a manifesto will grow.

A pioneer right-wing blogger and op-ed contributor, Will Collier, took a stab at suggested articles for the crowd-written document. Here’s his top five:

1. A moratorium on bailouts, whether for Wall Street bankers, General Motors or the irresponsible guy down the street who "bought" too much house. "Failures must be allowed to fail."

2. Repeal of all "stimulus" spending for the years 2011 and beyond.

3. Repeal of all "stimulus" pet projects in 2009-2010 with no stimulative effect.

4. Defeat of the Obama 2010 budget, with a new budget set at 2008 levels plus inflation. We've already spent too much money that we don't have.

5. Defeat of any politician who voted for the February "stimulus" bill.

Collier was in sync with the mood of the convention-goers, let the mustangs of private enterprise roam free of the corral of government, which raises the question: Is governing like a tea party?

Brandt Ayers is publisher of The Anniston Star.