The TP was originally analyzed as astroturf. This soon came to be regarded as the unsophisticated view and now it is main viewed as grassroots. Ames and Yasha Levine start again and make a more sophisticated case that it is astroturf, both in origins and in essence:
http://www.alternet.org/story/147124/
Interesting and fairly well supported conclusions:
1) The real origins of the TP organizational structure predate the Rick Santelli CNN rant by 6 months;
2) Santelli's rant wasn't spontaneous, it was a "launch event" for a pre-programmed movement;
3) The pre-tea structure used the same tea party slogan for what was then it's exclusive goal: opening all the coasts for oil drilling, which they and their flash mobs pushed through;
4) All of which makes sense when you realize that all the money behind it comes from the Koch brothers, whose Koch industries is the largest privately owned US oil company. (As well as country with an amazing rap sheet of toxic spills of all kinds.)
5) And also why they are so quiet these days in the wake of the BP spill.
I'm not saying these points are indisputable, or even the overall astro turf argument itself. I'm just saying that if these points interest you the article will too and it's a much better version of this article then they wrote 2 years ago. It's long and wonky, but for a wonky article it's got funny lines because it is Ames.
Michael