One of the first loud shots in the “tea party” movement came in February 2009 from a most unlikely place: the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade.

When Rick Santelli, a voluble former trader working as a CNBC analyst, was asked about an Obama administration plan to spend $75 billion helping homeowners refinance mortgages and avoid foreclosure, he launched a fiery, four-minute rant in which he mockingly proposed dumping derivatives securities into Lake Michigan.

“We’re thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July,” he said, to cheers from the traders behind him.

Video of the tirade became an overnight sensation on cable TV news shows and the Internet, helping give a name to the burgeoning grass-roots movement of conservatives and libertarians.

Santelli himself has ultimately proved a minor figure as a dizzying array of political newcomers, Washington insiders, talk show hosts, retired politicians and longtime activists on the right have fought for the past year to define the movement’s goals.

At the same time, a general suspicion of elites and a populist streak have ensured that no single individual or group can lay claim to the leadership mantle.

Today, there are at least three major national organizations with the words “tea party” in their name, as well as perhaps thousands of smaller local groups that meet with varying levels of formality:

* Tea Party Patriots , an umbrella group with 1,500 others beneath it, claims to have the largest following. National and state coordinators disseminate information about rallies to 15 million people through a complex web of e-mail lists and discussion boards.

* Tea Party Nation , which has 22,000 members on its social networking site, rose to prominence by laying claim to the first national Tea Party Convention, in Nashville last month, where Sarah Palin made headlines by writing notes in the palm of her hand before delivering the keynote address. But organizers are under criticism from the rank and file for attempting to turn a profit.

* Tea Party Express numbers only in the dozens, but it has hit the road to spread the gospel with a high public profile. The members, mainly entertainers and talk radio personalities, describe themselves as the circus act in the movement. They rode a bus across the country last summer, holding events in small towns that generated plenty of media buzz.

In addition, the movement has gotten institutional support from some big names in national conservative circles. Fox News host Glenn Beck started a 9-12 Project, which coordinated a rally in Washington last fall that drew thousands of tea party types.

FreedomWorks , a limited-government group run by Dick Armey, who was the House majority leader from 1995 through 2002, has provided key logistical support and training to tea partiers.

For now, it’s clear what the movement does not like: the financial institution bailouts orchestrated by the Bush administration in 2008, the stimulus package pushed to enactment by President Obama in 2009, the proposed changes to the health insurance system, the rising national debt.

But it’s not at all clear what the movement wants instead.

Like the hodgepodge of constituencies on the left that coalesced in the 1960s behind their shared opposition to the Vietnam War, tea party adherents have so far been held together by their antipathy to the establishment — and are working to smooth over their broader philosophical disagreements for as long as possible.

The Missing Message

Increasingly, ideas from the fringes of the movement have caused friction to bubble to the surface: Not all tea partiers want to abolish the Federal Reserve, question the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate or share the conspiratorial fears of the John Birch Society, for example.

And tea party activist Debra Medina, a candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Texas, was lampooned by Beck on the air after she sounded sympathetic to those who have suggested that the U.S. government condoned the Sept. 11 attacks.

Even the question of candidate endorsements has split the various factions. Tea Party Express doesn’t plan to endorse anyone this fall, but some local Tea Party Patriots groups will.

In recent weeks, there has been a flurry of effort to write a manifesto for the movement.

A group of old-guard Republicans, including anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist and Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese III, met down the road from George Washington’s home to sign the Mount Vernon Statement.

But its principles — supporting free enterprise, opposing tyranny and honoring liberty — were too general and its backers too establishment to have much of an effect on the populist movement.

Another approach is coming from conservative activist Ryan Hecker, a national coordinator with the Tea Party Patriots. He’s collected thousands of online surveys to create a list of 21 shared ideals among activists.

They range from conservative standards, such as lower income tax rates and an end to spending earmarks, to more libertarian proposals, such as fighting any regulation or taxation of the Internet.

A few would even fit in at a left-leaning, good-government group: broadcasting all federal government meetings on the Internet, for example, or requiring that all bills be made public for seven days before any vote is taken in Congress.

In an homage to the “Contract With America,” which helped the GOP win control of the House in 1994, Hecker has dubbed his document the “Contract from America”; tea partiers can vote online until April 15 for their favorite 10 planks.

In a sign of closer ties   between the grass roots and the establishment, Hecker outlined the proposal at last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference meeting  in Washington while standing next to Armey, one of the chief authors of the 1994 manifesto.

While emphasizing the bottom-up nature of the platform’s creation, Hecker said it was no accident that hot-button social issues such as abortion and gay rights were not among the options.

“That’s the way you unify people without getting into specifics that divide us,” he said.

But even that attempt to unify people proved divisive. Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation said the Patriots should have met with other movement leaders before setting to work on their platform.

Phillips has invited activists to Las Vegas in July for a platform drafting session under the Tea Party Nation banner.

“One of the things the tea party movement needs is perhaps a little more communication,” he said.

Tea party groups have also fallen out a bit over a meeting that 50 activists had with Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele. A Tea Party Patriots member created a Web site denouncing those who attended as sellouts to the Republican Party.

But Karin Hoffman, who organized the meeting, said the purpose was to influence the party, not the other way around.

In a movement that prides itself on being leaderless, activists are finding it increasingly difficult to take a step without generating criticism from within the ranks.

“It’s unfortunate when you have egos that are going to get in the way, but it sorts itself out,” Hoffman added.

Despite the national tensions, local tea parties appear to be thriving. Phillips and Hoffman both say their groups are growing fast as the midterm campaign moves into high gear.

Mark Williams, a conservative talk radio host in California, said the same of the Tea Party Express, which plans a three-week bus tour from Nevada to Washington ending near April 15, the day tax returns are due.

“It’s like a circus came into town,” Williams said. “We dominate the local news. We get people excited. We help them organize, and we leave organizations in our wake.”

Ambreen Ali writes for Congress.org.

A version of this story first appeared in CQ Weekly.

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