1773? Nope, more like 1765.

The folks at the The Bosque Boys blog sums up the Tea Party movement by speculating that the situation is more akin to 1765 than 1773:

I am NOT one who doubts that the sentiments were genuine or grassroots. The protesters were sincere, but mostly they were dazed and confused. The lack of direction and coherency proved frustrating and hard to follow. The unhappy demonstrators did not know what to do, but this was something. If the protests had been more like they were initially described in the mainstream media (the product of a vast right-wing conspiracy), the demonstrations might have been more satisfying. The unruly events needed some genius behind the scenes to orchestrate a unifying theme.

For that reason, the self-titled Tea Party analogy misses the mark historically.

The historic Boston Tea Party (Dec. 1773) occurred at a point much closer to the culmination of the Imperial Crisis, which was already eight years in the making. The Patriot cause in 1773 was actually quite mature and ready to break across the "national" scene as a sophisticated colony-wide movement. The illegal attack on private property in Boston Harbor provoked the British government into the Intolerable Acts and led to the First Continental Congress and the short ascent to full-blown Revolution.

If anything, this modern Tea Party movement is more like the spontaneous, unfocused, and out-of-control reaction in Boston (and other places) to the Stamp Act, which proved the first act in the three-part, decade-long Imperial Crisis. The uncontrolled mayhem in 1765 gave rise to the Sons of Liberty and leaders like Sam Adams and John Hancock to guide and regulate the unrestrained and unnerving expression of popular anger (and violence).