According to CNN, the Tea-Party-supported principles include:

• Fiscal Responsibility.
• Lower Taxes
• States’ rights
• National Security.

My opinion is that anyone who tries will find it very difficult to achieve principles #1 and #2 at the same time. The Laffer curve is not that powerful, if it even exists at all. And “National Security” is so far better under Obama than it was under either Clinton or George W. Bush after their first years. So I’m not sure what their movement would really do if given power. Even supposing that tax cut multipliers are much larger than economists think, they cannot balance the budget based solely on that.

As near as I can tell, the optimal strategy according to this movement would be “militaristic Keynesianism,” which would mean cutting taxes, and increasing government spending by vastly increasing expenditures on the military (to further National Security) while making cuts elsewhere. The resulting stimulus from these increased outlays would hopefully get the economy back to full employment, at which point the military spending would be curtailed as well, and the increased wealth produced by the hopefully-booming economy would allow for deficit reduction. (I can’t figure how states’ rights is involved. I suspect it’s a euphemism for overturning Roe v. Wade.)

 That’s the ideal scenario for the Tea-Party. Frankly, however, I really doubt whether the deficit can ever be eliminated altogether by this method.  I think that, at any time, they can have at most 3 of the 4 principles adhered to.