Each time I see the video of Linda McMahon, the WWE owner and Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Connecticut, delivering a swift kick to an employee's testicles as she fires him, I can't help thinking of the movie "Idiocracy." In it, Luke Wilson awakens in a future United States so dumbed down by media that it has elected a pro wrestler as president, with a paid pitchman as his secretary of state ("Brought to you by Carl's Jr.")

And the really funny thing is that the movie was made just a few years ago--just before the advent of the Tea Party and Linda McMahon's candidacy. Is it a co-inky-dink that teabagging and bag-teeing arrived simultaneously in our political history? I think not.

The time is ripe for simple solutions. For tossing the bums out. For throwing out the babies with the wetbacks. For anything goes so long as everyone in Washington leaves. For reading the preface to "Politics for Dummies" and launching a movement. For reducing the best country in the world's government to a pictograph on Glenn Beck's chalkboard. 

While the message of radical conservatism is stunningly simplistic, it also is remarkably clear and getting clearer. Forget the movement's Sideshow Bobs carrying the "Obama=Hitler" signs. Pay no attention to the predominantly white, wealthy males behind the curtains at the Hall of Mirrors. Look for a moment only at the main attractions on the Tea Party carnival's Midway.

Chris Littleton, a founder of the Cincinnati Tea Party breaks it down this way in a must-read USAToday article:

"We have three core values that really, I guess, span everything we do. ...

"One, a fundamental limitation of government. The limited government is key. We believe that the more control and influence the size of government, the more it grows, the less important the individual is. ...

"And then the next would be fiscal responsibility. There is no excuse in the world why our government can't be fiscally responsible. ...

"And the last one is free markets, or you could call it free enterprise. The ability to earn your own way, to generate your own wealth, to create your own American dream should be relatively free from all of the inhibitions of the government."

As USAToday boils it down, the Tea Party has crystalized its message in these three core values and dispensed with debate on social issues like race, gay rights, corporate responsibility, religion and abortion precisely because these issues are best unspoken and politically unnecessary. What remains is pure cotton candy for the masses, secretly fortified with all the consequences that inspire the wet dreams of social conservatives.

Take the first two of Littleton's core values: limited government and fiscal responsibility. Together they equal severe cuts in the federal budget, not just the deficit. Make no mistake: Conservatives always want to apply an axe, not a scalpel.

But any way you slice it, the federal budget has a lot to do with equal justice, minimum standards for individual prosperity and ensuring the greater good in areas as diverse as the environment and road construction. Cut the budget with an axe and you cut a decent retirement and adequate medical care for seniors, food and health assistance for the poor and unemployed, civil protections for minorities and women, environmental regulation, and more. And all those cuts end up disproportionately starving, disenfranchising and keeping jobless many more women, minority citizens and immigrants than white males. The power of the purse in GOP hands is the power to destroy the entire liberal agenda.

And the unrestricted free-market theme of the third Tea Party core value? Think Citizens United, Rand Paul's segregated lunch counter and apologies to BP when it destroys ecosystems.

Now the beauty of having just three core values, with social issues left unaddressed, unmentioned and unexamined, is that the Tea Party can do the dirty work of the GOP without any direct ties to--or any of the antagonizing encumbrances of--its ideological master. The arrangement can look arm's length while being sordidly intimate behind the scenes. It's as if the Tea Party were merely hiking the Appalachian Trail with Republicans. But of course, they're also stopping off in the bushes together. The GOP's role is to resist the temptation to narrow its appeal while gratefully accepting Tea Party votes. The Tea Party's role is to swing the GOP even more rightward by supplying candidates and supporters cloaked in traditional GOP fiscal policy. They are essentially one and the same organization, with the Tea Party supplying the shock troops for GOP electoral goals. As a result, the message of the GOP is increasingly the message of the Tea Party.

The challenge for Democrats and liberals is to develop a core message that puts the three core messages of the Tea Party in the context of the nation's other priorities, including stimulus spending and rational oversight of the free market. Essentially, nothing else will matter if that message doesn't get out and resonate--and soon.