Who’s Who in the Tea Party? (Part IV)

The last two factions of the Tea Party movement that we’ll look at in this series are the ResistNet Tea Party and the 1776 Tea Party.

The ResistNet Tea Party is part of a corporate family that includes several for-profit organizations and a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit, all owned by Steve Elliott.  Throughout the last decade, Elliott and his corporations/ organizations developed a long list of literally “right” thinking individuals by conducting petition campaigns on “American values” issues like supporting the BSA’s anti-gay stance, “saving” traditional marriage, “standing with the unborn,” supporting Judge Roy Moore’s fight to keep the Ten Commandments in his Alabama courthouse, making God Bless America the “national hymn,” supporting the Pledge of Allegiance with the words “under God,” and opposing immigration reform. 

The ResistNet’s public interface is the ResistNet.com website, the self-proclaimed “Home of the Patriotic Resistance.”  As of October 27, 2010, Resistnet.com lists 83,441 members.  In addition to the typical Tea Party emphases on fiscal responsibility, states’ rights and Second Amendment rights, ResistNet’s website advertises study groups and projects reflecting a significant anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim agenda, with topics like “Watchmen on Amnesty,” “We Stand with Arizona,” and “Guard against Creeping Sharia in America.”  The ResistNet Tea Party is strongly supported by Minuteman and anti-immigration groups throughout the United States.   In turn, ResistNet publicly supports anti-immigrant agendas like Arizona’s; ResistNet is currently taking donations for an “Arizona Defense Fund.”

The 1776 Tea Party, aka TeaParty.org, is even more directly associated with Minuteman organizations than ResistNet.  In 2009, Dale Robertson, the self-promoting, confrontational and blatantly racist US Marine veteran who founded the 1776 Tea Party, sold interests in the organization to Stephen Eichler and Tim Bueler, then the executive director and media director of the militant anti-immigrant Minuteman Project.  Under the management of Robertson, Eichler, and Bueler, the 1776 Tea Party’s list of “non-negotiable core beliefs” have expanded to include “Illegal Aliens are Here Illegally,”  “Pro-Domestic Employment is Indispensable,” “Gun Ownership is Sacred,” and “English as Core Language is  Required.”  Currently, TeaParty.org reports that “Tea Party braces for ‘epidemic’ phantom-style voter fraud” as “Non citizens [will]  vote Democratic.”   Most of the 1776 Tea Party affiliate groups are small; it appears that this Tea Party faction’s overall membership may be as low as 10,000.

Tomorrow, this series will conclude with a summary of the collective “core values” contributed by the diverse factions of the Tea Party movement.