The issue among pagans isn’t so much that she rejects a religion she once “dabbled” in. It was her ignorant portrayal of what she was doing as “witchcraft.” What she represented as witchcraft would not be recognized as such by any mainstream, mature authentic practioners of the craft in its many forms. It would be like me saying I used to be Catholic and then describing some nonsense from a Jack Chick cartoon and representing that as a real experience of Catholicism.
The other thing we must keep in mind about the Tea Party is that it is basically a populist catch basin of discontent. It’s ideology is a dynamic mix of things people are unhappy with in the current system. There are a lot of different things to be unhappy about, and few of them add up into any cohesive platform. There are regular folks with legitimate grievances in the Tea Party. There are also any number of whackjob conspiracy theorists, apocalyptic militia types and outright white supremecists. There are libertarians on the one hand and Christian dominionists on the other.
It is supposed that most pagans are liberals, and to a degree that is true, but there are plenty of conservatives too, especially among Nordic traditions, and so far as I have seen, the ceremonial magick community - ie OTO. They obviously aren’t going along with the neocons who want to impose a Christianists theocracy in this country, but they do make up a significant portion of the libertarian/fiscal conservatives.
The prospects of the Tea Party being a legitimate workable solution to discontent are not good. Populism breeds a lot of violent revolutions and extreme nationalist movements but never any sustainable solutions. The candidates it attracts are sometimes brilliant orators and invariably saavy opportunists who know how to play to discontent but have no real skills or desire to engage the hideously complex problems of governance.
