Who’s who in the Tea Party? (Part III)

The Tea Party Patriots (“TPP”), incorporated as a 501(c)(4) organization with a website and a PAC, is the umbrella organization for the local chapters that comprise the genuinely grass roots Tea Party movement.   As of October 26, 2010, the TPP website had almost 138,000 “Registered Patriots,” and TPP had over 500,000 followers on FaceBook.   The thousands of local TPP chapters that are listed on the TPP website are distributed all over the US, but the largest numbers of chapters are in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas.  It’s hard to tell whether this distribution merely reflects population distribution or actually represents higher than average interest in the Tea Party agenda. 

The original TPP founders include Jenny Beth Martin, Mark Meckler and Amy Kremer.  Martin was once a Republican campaign consultant who, with her husband, managed to rack up over half a million dollars in unpaid Federal income taxes during the Bush administration.  After filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Martin helped organize TPP, which pays her about $6k per month for her services as CEO.  Meckler, a California attorney offering email list-building and petition services to Republican political candidates and for Republican ballot initiatives (e.g., a ban on public employees unions), served as coordinator for the Sacramento and California state Tea Party groups before co-founding the TPP.   Kremer, a “birther” who is now chairing the Tea Party Express, is the blogger behind the ultra-conservative “Southern Belle Politics.”

Although TPP’s website declares that it is a non-partisan group, it proudly advertises its partners, including FreedomWorks (run by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey), The Leadership Institute (“training conservative leaders” and “supporting the conservative movement”), Let Freedom Ring (“supporting the conservative agenda”), Red State (“the leading conservative news blog for right of center online activists”), Red Country (“the place for state and local conservative politics”), Regular Folks United (“I started this site because I’ve had enough of the liberal elite new morality”), and Michele Malkin (conservative columnist, contributor to Fox News, and author of Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies). 

TPP’s website lists the organization’s “core values” as fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets.  However, its May 2010 “convention” included militia and Posse Comitatis rhetoric, anti- immigration and anti-Islam speakers, and advocacy for repeal of the 16^th and 17^th Amendments to the Constitution.  Given the large number of local chapters, it is likely that a wide variety of additional “core values” have been added to the grass roots’ agendas.

Tomorrow, we will discuss how some Tea Party groups have been co-opted by individuals with different agendas.