You must be thinking of a different "tea party faction" than the one I know. Because the one I know has been doing its damnedest to to elect "social conservatives" who support "traditional family values".

But yeah, they're pretty libertarian with respect to the liberties they like. Everything else can go.

That's my impression of the Tea Party in my area (southeast Texas) as well, although the conservatism goes beyond social issues like abortion or gay marriage, and into things more relevant to this discussion, too. On security issues they actually seem rather pro-police and pro-military rather than the opposite. There's a lot of support among local tea-party activists for ideas like having drones patrol the Texas-Mexico border, or even nutty stuff like having roving police ID checks to catch illegal immigrants (Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio is something of a hero). There are some libertarian views as well, but mostly limited to guns and taxes. On security issues, nativist views seem to override suspicion of government.