They're few and far between, but free-thinking Democrats are popping up at tea party rallies and finding common ground with Republicans and independents.

Disgusted by the hyperpartisan antics of President Barack Obama walking out on debt-reduction talks, and alienated by the tax-and-spend policies of fellow Democrats, a new breed of populist progressives is emerging to challenge party orthodoxy.

These aren't your grandpa's Dixiecrats, relegated to regional margins, but more like insurgent Reagan Democrats of the 1980s. As the economy slumps and Obama stimulus policies prove ineffective, or worse, more Democrats are buying into the tea message of smaller, more responsive government.

"The tea party wants people who believe in government versus others who are willfully ignorant and call us 'anti-government.' That's a blatant lie," says Tim Curtis, a Tampa area Democrat who identifies himself as a tea partier.

Unlike hard-core libertarianism, Curtis believes the core mission of the tea party movement is to improve government -- and that, he says, is something Democrats should support.

"We want effective, efficient government that's smaller," says Curtis, who challenged U.S. Rep. Cathy Castor in the 2010 Democratic primary.

Curtis, who came back to the Democratic Party after a brief and unfulfilling flirtation with the GOP, says he works with tea party and 9/12 groups to "organize and educate" Tampa area residents about the 10th Amendment and states' rights.

Citing one divisive issue, and bridging the left-right chasm, Curtis declares, "If a state wants to fund abortion, then that state has the right to do so."

The key to consensus, he says, is to focus on "principles and values" from a constitutional foundation.

Fred O'Neal took his Democratic Party membership and founded the nation's first official political tea party, the Florida TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party.

"I had re-registered Democrat from Republican in 2005, primarily because of how the Iraq War/occupation was going at the time.

"In 2008, I supported Obama, or I should say, opposed John McCain because Obama said he'd get us out of Iraq and because I feared McCain would invade Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan and probably another five countries a year until his term as president was up," said O'Neal, an Orlando attorney.

"Personally, I thought the Republicans were just as much to blame for the national debt gettng out of hand as were the Democrats."

Ultimately, O'Neal found himself in no-man's land and launched his own tea party -- which is flavored by populist positions familiar to lifelong Democrats.

"In 2010, I got pilloried by the Republicans for having been a registered Democrat. I didn't realize that people who had been registered Democrats at one point in their lives were persona non grata to many in the tea party movement. 

"Nor did I realize that the Good Book states somewhere that God said that the tea party had to be part of the Republican Party."

Ladling on more sarcasm, O'Neal says, "I still don't see why we should be protecting tax loopholes for such blue-blooded, all-American corporations as British Petroleum (sic), Royal Dutch Shell and Hugo Chavez's beloved Citgo at the expense of our grandkids.

"Then again, I never was smart enough to understand how trickle-down economics helped the middle class -- the ones who always ended up getting trickled on."

Convergence of the "right" and "left" fuels the perennial presidential candidacy of tea party favorites like U.S. Rep. Ron Paul.

This month, the liberal Huffington Post carried an article titled: "Why Anti-War Democrats Should Vote Ron Paul."

Yet there are limits to such consensus. HuffPo also criticized another tea party maven, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, likening her pro-Zionist foreign policy to McCain's.