The Tea Party and the Whig Party.

[kentuck]

Is there a similarity?

http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/history/whig-party-origins.html

<snip>
Whig party

Origins

As a party it did not exist before 1834, but its nucleus was formed in 1824 when the adherents of John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay joined forces against Andrew Jackson. This coalition, which later called itself the National Republican party, increased in strength after the election of Jackson in 1828 and was joined in opposition to the President by other smaller parties, the most notable being the Anti-Masonic party. By 1832, Jackson had also earned the enmity of such diverse groups as states' rights advocates in the South, proponents of internal improvements in the West, and businessmen and friends of the Bank of the United States in the East. This opposition was built up and correlated by Henry Clay in the election of 1832. Two years later, in 1834, all the various groups were combined in a loose alliance.

[Recursion]

1. Back then I would have definitely been a Whig rather than a Democrat

Anti-slavery (for the most part) and pro Government investment.

[kentuck]

2. The end of the Whig Party

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/1801-1900/the-american-whig-party/the-end-of-the-party.php

<snip>
Henry Clay and others had called themselves National Republicans -based on their vision of the United States as nation while others saw it as a confederation of states - taking strong national measures like building inter-state roads. When a number of southern Democrats like John C. Calhoun, threw their lot in with the National Republicans, they were united only by their opposition to the growing "kinglike" strength of the president. Thus they came to be called Whigs, implying that the Jacksonians were Tories, in favor of "King" Andrew.

The Whig party ran, for some years, mostly in strong second place to the Democrats. They elected William Henry Harrison, in the famous "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" campaign of nonsense, copied from the Jackson Democrats, but Harrison (the hero of Tippecanoe) died just days into his presidency, and was succeded by Tyler, one of the anti-Jackson democrats, who showed himself to be basically a firm Democrat, and was "read out of the Whig party". They also elected Zachary Taylor (another war hero and no politician) who was died fairly early in the term, making Millard Filmore president.
.....

In the 1850s when the nation became increasingly divided over slavery, a new Republican party formed, primarily to keep slavery quarantined off in the South, while Southern sentiment was for their right to move, with their way of life, into any new territory. Their methods of agriculture and their best cash crops tended to deplete the soil, so that Southerners were among the most aggressive Western expansionists.

The Republican Party, while it also attracted many anti-slavery Democrats, drew off so many Whigs that they effectively killed the Whig party. The Whigs were also badly hurt by the short-lived Native American or Know-Nothing party, which was primarily anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic. This party was strong in urban areas, which had also been a Whig stronghold. The last year the Whigs had a presidential candidate was in 1856.

....more

[Progressive dog]

3. I don't really think so

except that it was a new party. In England, it was the most liberal party.
The Whigs didn't last long here. The Republican party formed from some Whigs and northern Democrats.
The tea party has no program separate from today's Republican party. I would place it as a type of propaganda machine within the GOP, financed by wealthy extreme rightists, and intended to intimidate any opposition.

[RevStPatrick]

4. No. The Tea Party is MUCH more like...

The Native American Party, also known as the "Know Nothings."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothings