They hold protests and badger politicians at town hall meetings — and they really like tea parties.Grassroots conservatives have mobilized their resources and organized hundreds of local protests across the country since Barack Obama’s election last fall, culminating with a several-thousand-protester march in Washington last month.One political scientist says this movement, sometimes referred to as the “tea party movement,” could have large political ramifications in the future.”The normal political divisions have shaken a little bit,” said Robert Hogan, a political science professor keeping a close eye on the tea party movement.Hogan said the movement is part of the electorate’s growing distrust of government, a brand of conservatism especially likely to take hold and grow in Southern states like Louisiana, where even Democratic politicians have a reputation for conservatism on many issues.What’s notable about the tea party protesters, Hogan said, is their willingness to take on Democrats and Republicans — the party with which many conservative protesters have historically associated.A late-September Gallup poll indicates approval ratings of both parties in the U.S. Congress are at record-low levels, 36 percent for Democrats and 27 percent for Republicans.What’s notable about the poll, Gallup says, is where criticism of the Republican Party comes from.”Remarkably, an outright majority of Republicans today, 58 percent, say they disapprove of the job the Republicans in Congress are doing,” a Gallup news release stated. Hogan said conservatives had grown increasingly frustrated with former President George W. Bush’s domestic policies — which included deficit spending — and Obama’s victory last November was the ultimate tipping point for many of the protesters taking to the streets now.”We’re willing to take on any party,” said Robin Harris Edwards, former president and current member of the Baton Rouge Tea Party. “We’re willing to hold anyone responsible for what the people want.”Hogan said the big unknown question is whether this dissatisfaction with both parties will lead to the rise of a third party.”[Republicans] are leaderless — there’s no spokesperson for the party that sticks out, and there’s now a vacuum there,” Hogan said. “If you’re a minor party or libertarian candidate, you’re thinking maybe they’ll gravitate to my candidacy.”Additionally, the economic crisis fits in neatly with historical indicators of third-party successes, Hogan said. Large political shifts have often followed economic or social changes.Hogan mentioned the populist and progressive movements of the late-19th and 20th centuries and, more recently, Ross Perot’s surprisingly strong candidacy in the 1992 presidential election as parallels to the tea party movement.”[The tea party movement] has a consistency to previous historical patterns that makes you think there could be something to this,” Hogan said.Edwards was quick to point out there is much debate within the tea party movement about where to go next. Some, like her, advocate working with, rather than against, the Republican Party.”It’s unwise strategically to form all these extra parties and split votes,” she said.Others disagree with Edwards and prefer looking for ways to branch out from the Republican Party, like forming a third-party. Edwards said one of the reasons she stepped down as president of the Baton Rouge Tea Party was because of a rumor she was too loyal to the Republican Party for the movement to succeed independently — something she categorically says is untrue.”I’m just trying to make changes within the party and bring the Republican Party back to being the beacon of conservative values,” she said. “That should be our cause.”Only time will tell whether this movement will eventually break the current political divisions, Hogan said.”There is a growing unrest among conservatives, among the electorate in a way we haven’t seen in a long time,” he said. “We are in the midst of something.”—-Contact Nate Monroe at [email protected]