Last weekend may well have marked the zenith of the national Tea Party movement, as founders and followers rallied in Washington, D.C., to rail not only against pending health care legislation but out-of-control spending.

The group — well represented locally by the Waco Tea Party and its charismatic leader, Toby Marie Walker — might have trouble sustaining itself beyond the 2010 election if it doesn’t get beyond the oft-cliched rhetoric I heard on C-Span and evolve into a movement of real solutions and meaningful dialogue.

Simply put, the Tea Party must decide what it’s for, not what it’s against, and how we as a nation can get there.

There’s no denying the growing anger and frustration that this movement clearly represents. I’ve seen it at several Waco Tea Party events since its first rallies downtown April 15, drawing several hundred very riled-up folks.

Today it’s driven by a justifiable concern of average Americans who sense, quite correctly, that Washington is well adrift in matters of fiscal restraint and civic integrity. Followers don’t always get the specifics on big issues, but they know something is very, very wrong.

But while this movement has attracted more and more people, both locally and nationally, the danger of such groups is that they traditionally run out of steam if they don’t begin to craft genuine ideas and grasp the complexities of the issues they so readily sound off about.

Down to details

It’s all well and good to holler out that you’re for, say, “getting back to the Constitution,” which I’ve heard fairly often now. But just what does that mean? The original Constitution, for instance, says nothing about eliminating people’s right to vote for candidates by forcing term limits on them and us.

Is it possible Tea Party adherents really just want to cherry-pick the parts of the Constitution that appeal to them?

What about health care? Sure, as buttons and signs suggest, Tea Party activists want the government to keep its hands off their health care. But just what solutions do they have for medical costs that are skyrocketing, hindering not only families but small businesses that offer health care as a competitive employee benefit?

What about all the waste in Medicare we keep hearing about? As local tax attorney Danny Palmer noted in an unusually astute guest column last week, why aren’t we going after that, reform or no reform? Are Tea Party activists for cutting out waste in Medicare? If not, why not? If so, what?

Finally, the Tea Party must decide whether, as with the deservedly vilified ACORN, it’s really just an adjunct to a political party — in this case, the Republican Party, as some observers bet all along.

During the big Tea Party Express rally in Waco two weeks ago, local Tea Party officials largely confirmed what some of us long suspected — that this group is actually intent on unseating U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, a Waco Democrat, and replacing him with a Republican — any Republican.

Tea Party organizers nationwide have made it clear they’re going after plenty of Democrats in 2010 but precious few Republicans. How do they square that with the fact that much of the massive debt we now face comes from years when some of these very Republicans ran Congress, producing huge deficits with great abandon on things like the Medicare prescription drug program, tax cuts and two wars?

If Tea Party officials are truly nonpartisan, as they once sought to convince we skeptics of the Fourth Estate, why do they target most Democrats but give a pass to the many Republicans who very definitely helped get us into this fix?

If it aims to be no more than a Republican knockoff, so be it. But if this is a truly independent movement with fiscal aims, it may have to prove it by cutting the umbilical cord to Republican founders such as Dick Armey and putting ideas forward with the clarity that, say, Newt Gingrich’s famous Contract With America offered.

Either that, or risk devolving into no more than a stooge for some of the worst elements of the GOP.