NIck Gillespie, editor and chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com, interviewed Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe today to discuss the Tea Party movement, the 2010 elections and the possibility of real change coming to Washington this November.

Gillespie begins by addressing the issue of cutting the budget:

NG: The main, central complaint of the Tea Party movement is that the government spends too much money. What needs to be cut and how fast?

DA: Actually, the complaint is that it's too big and too meddlesome, but you have to cut the government immensely and as fast as possible.

NG: Give us specifics.

DA: Obviously , the big line is, you can't deal with it unless you deal with entitlement spending. There's one guy that's stepped up to that, Paul Ryan, he's condemned by the liberals and ignored by the Republicans. But the fact is, it you just said, all government benefit programs can be voluntary participation only, then all of a sudden you have people voluntarily saying well take me off your list of unfunded mandates for Medicare and Social Security.

MK: By the way, there's a bunch of low-hanging fruit. You could repeal Obamacare, you could repeal TARP, you could repeal Fannie and Freddie, and these are all big fiscal time bombs. But I think you need to cap discretionary spending as well, and by the way defense shouldn't be held harmless, if you limit the overall growth in a budget you are going to force some efficiencies that are essential. 

Gillespie then shifts to a common concern among skeptics who wonder how this time around will be different:

NG: So politically what has to happen, because on a certain level, what your saying is standard kind of limited government rhetoric. Why is it going to work now, when it didn't work under Bush?

MK: Well responsibility on spending has now become the defining issue in politics. This whole movement, this whole Tea Party movement, is there to hold politicians accountable. They've replaced alot of big spending Republicans and we like to say that November third is more important than November second because all politicians left to their own devices will spend money they don't have. So these guys have to show up, the Tea Party has to show, after the election and hold them accountable. 

In the next section, Gillespie addresses what the liberal media sees as a contradiction when Americans enrolled in Medicare opposed government-run healthcare via Obamacare.

DA: There's no confusion at all. There is confusion among liberals, because they can't understand any idea that's deeper than water on a plate. What they're saying is, "Look you've forced me into Medicare, I have no choice, you punish anybody that would give me medical services and take payment other than Medicare." So it's really, "give me liberty or give me death" with Medicare. "Now don't come in here and cut my Medicare so you can expand your compulsive mandates on all the population." And there's a big differences between "don't cut my benefits and don't cut Medicare. If I were to be free to choose to stay in this program, then make good on your commitment. If you leave others free to leave, there will be more money available for the making of that commitment."

The discussion then went back to assurances that this time will be different than limited government movements of the past:

NG: In your book, you talk alot about how the Tea Party movement has to take over the Republican party. What assurances do we have, or do we need, that they'll govern differently this time than the last time. Under Bush, the Republicans were terrible. They essentially colluded to increase discretionary federal expenditures by 100 percent. What's going to be different this time?

DA: Well first of all, this movement that's transforming Congress is a bottom-up movement, and politicians will conform in their behavior to the requirements of voters for the most fundamental reason of all: they want to keep their jobs. 

MK: We call it a hostile takeover of the Republican party, by the way, and there's two parts to that process. First is personnel changes. We're replacing senators like Bennett with senators like Lee. And the second part is are ability, like you say, to hold these politicians accountable. Because any politician will go the wrong way if left to their own devices. 

On Sarah Palin's endorsements:

DA: Well my guess, is that when Sarah Palin gets into the endorsement business, she's probably doing the same thing we're doing. Listening to the real activists that really live in the state or district and getting their information about what is the quality of the two candidates and what races may be winnable. Rather than listening to the professionals in the political party that are dettached, removed and simply, frankly don't know. We have known better about what's going on in Republican primary politics over the past two years than the Republican party, why? Because we listen to real people. I think Sarah Palin is doing the same thing. 

MK: She's no more the Tea Party leader than Dick Armey or Matt Kibbe are. It's a leaderless movement. But you are seeing that this movement represents a stage, and you're seeing alot of candidates climb up on that stage. And I say, the more leaders the better. 

In closing Kibbe had this to stay about the future of the Tea Party movement:

MK: I think the Tea Party, if it succeeds, is a sustainable community. It's gotta be there and we gotta get out of political space, because no one pays attention to politics in the real world, into culture space. It's gotta be fun and it's gotta be a way for people to stay engaged in the political process.