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WASHINGTON - Canyon Clowdus thinks Americans "have less freedom and pay more taxes than ever."

"We need more John Wayne and Jesus in Washington," the Marble Falls rancher and businessman declares.

Clowdus is just the kind of grass-roots activist that national Republican leaders sought to fire up in the Tea Party movement that has spread across Texas in energetic rallies and heated town hall confrontations. Now, the 40-year-old Army veteran is seeking to unseat an incumbent congressman whom he calls a profligate spender.

Just one problem: Clowdus, an avid Tea Party loyalist, is running in the Republican primary against a Republican incumbent, Rep. Mike Conaway of Midland.

Across Texas, at least five Tea Party activists have announced their candidacies for U.S. House and Senate seats.

"If you are going to have a throw-the-bums-out (mentality)," said Matt Angle, director of the Lone Star Project, a Democratic group, "the bums (in Texas) are the Republicans."

While Tea Party activists have rallied from New York to New Mexico, Cal Jillson, political science professor at Southern Methodist University, believes the Lone Star State is particularly fertile ground.

"The Tea Party movement is stronger in Texas than in many other places," Jillson said. "It's a presence throughout the country, but in the conservative parts of the country with a strong populist tradition, it seems to play a stronger role."

Some are beginning to wonder if the national GOP may have created something it can't control.

"The thing that the Republican incumbent fears the most is a challenge from the right," Jillson said. "If you look anything like a moderate Republican, the talk-radio right could come out against you."

A costly distraction?

While it's too early to determine if the Tea Party movement will prove to be a durable political force, its candidates could prove a costly and unwanted distraction for establishment Republicans who would rather be aiming their fire at Democrats. Case in point: the GOP race for governor, where Tea Party ally Debra Medina of Wharton has announced her candidacy for the Republican nomination against incumbent Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, whom she dismisses derisively as "get-along-style politicians."

Even if Medina can't catch the front-runners, she might draw enough votes from Perry's right flank to force an expensive runoff by denying the others a 50 percent share in the March primary.

In the Houston area, Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands, is being challenged in the GOP primary by Tyler Russell, an oil company engineer who faults the incumbent's votes for the Wall Street bailout and Bush-era spending increases.

"I felt like the people in our district were not being represented very conservatively when it comes to fiscal issues," says Russell, who was the first Texas candidate to sign talk show host Glenn Beck's "9-12 declaration" demanding limited government and religious values.

Chet Edwards targeted

Another Tea Party activist, Andrew Castanuela of Early, has lined up to run for Hutchison's U.S. Senate seat. And Tea Party loyalist Timothy Delasandro of College Station is opposing establishment Republicans who would like to unseat Waco's moderate Democratic congressman, Chet Edwards.

"I think they're going to move the entire argument to the right," said Republican Rob Curnock of Waco, who lost to Edwards in 2008 and is hoping for a 2010 rematch.

Clowdus, the most aggressive of the Tea Party challengers, warns Republican incumbents that they are underestimating the political danger they face in 2010.

"I don't think (incumbent Republicans) see that people are really upset with them," the former rodeo cowboy says. "They'd better be careful - they'll get eaten up by the Tea Parties ... They are more mad at the Republicans than they are at the Democrats."

Conaway's chief of staff, Richard Hudson, is mystified why his boss has been targeted by the movement he has encouraged.

"It's a misdirected frustration," said Hudson, "because Conaway is one of the most conservative members of Congress."

Hudson has a point. Conaway boasts a 96 percent lifetime voting rating from the American Conservative Union, the gold standard for right-thinking politicos. But to Clowdus, he's just another fox in Washington's henhouse.

Conaway, says Clowdus, "didn't see a spending bill he didn't like until we had a Democratic president."

At this point, Republican Party officials don't seem too concerned.

"I don't get the feeling that those particular candidacies are going to have a great effect," says Bryan Preston, director of communications for the Texas Republican Party.