That fact that I'm even writing about this is killing my brain cells. Adding insult to injury, I don't even have the benefit of doing it in cold, brewed, can form.

After becoming wildly furious over the way the GOP behaved during the last election - their selection of John McCain, the incessant condescension to the "religious right" about how they need to get out of the way and let the moderates run things - I was overjoyed with the creation of TCOT, or, Top Conservatives on Twitter. It was a great idea and drew together many conservatives. People like myself, who has been blogging since 2001, found strength in this conservative wave whereas before, we were practically stoned for expressing a conservative thought. Many new pundits and political websites were born, Team Sarah among those, which spawned similarly themed organizations dedicated to activism.

Then came the Rick Santelli rant and the Tea Party v2.0 was born.

Conservatives who were fed up with the self-serving GOP leadership embraced the Tea Party movement. The net/grassroots nature of the movement attracted more conservatives, and even moderates. It was a vote of no confidence.

The tea parties were going great. Hundreds of thousands were turning out to protest; the national count at the last one was near 1 million, maybe more.

Despite this, if I may borrow from Ross Perot, there was a "giant sucking sound," the monstrous power vacuum within the conservative movement. Lack of leadership creates chaos and struggle.

Sadly, this struggle temporarily took down the TCOT site.

I am upset because not only was I let down by the GOP, but now I feel as though certain members involved in the Tea Party movement let me and thousands of others down as well.

I will say this, I know some of the parties involved and some I know only by their actions. Faith without action is empty, so say the Gospels, thus we're told that you can tell many a thing by the actions of a person.

I know that the TCOT site is down, a site cofounded by Rob Neppell and Michael Leahy. Allegedly, Neppell shut it down when the pair couldn't agree on things.

Further complicating matters, a group splintered off of the National Tea Party Coalition and I later saw numerous Tweets from those involved with the group who publicly berated Leahy for his behavior. It was said that he was difficult with which to work. In fact, a mass email (which has been forwarded all around the Web apparently, sigh) sent out by Amy Kremer stated this:

"Unfortunately, early this week, the national coordinating team for the Tea Party Patriots were forced to end our relationship with Michael Leahy. Though we tried our best to resolve the differences between us, they had become so fundamental that we had no choice. Specifically, Michael had great difficulty in working as an equal member of a grassroots team, and despite repeated requests that he
alter his behavior, he insisted on acting as the self appointed "Leader."

Forgive me, but it seems a bit ironic for one to attack another over the very behavior one seems to demonstrate. Kremer also stated this after several lengthy paragraphs about how the movement belongs to everyone:

"There are several other sites popping up around the web for Tea Party information. Many of them do not list who the people are behind the sites. Please use caution as you fill out information with these sites. We do not know to whom some of the sites belong and they may or may not truly be associated with our cause for reducing out of control taxing and spending. You can trust that the Tea Party Patriots are, and will always remain, true to the cause."

This comes off as very, very bad for a multitude of reasons. This cause belongs to ALL OF US. Not to any one particular group of people.

What surprised me further was a quote from Eric Odom, of Don't Go, as saying:

"While others, including Michael Leahy, may claim to speak for the movement, we know the truth."

I don't recall anyone ever attempting to speak for the movement, with the sole exception of what I quoted above.

This was posted to the Tea Party Patriots site:

As a side note, yesterday Michael Leahy, who was removed from the
leadership of the Tea Party Patriots due to his inability to work in a
cooperative group setting, and his position that the grass roots needed
to be "led" instead of being honored with the leadership they
themselves have earned, issued a press release. In that press release,
Mr. Leahy had the audacity to purport to speak on behalf of the
national tea party movement in offering to personally meet with
President Obama.

If they're unaffiliated, then why do they care? I and the hundreds of others who protested outside of that very townhall meeting would like to tell the president firsthand what we think could be done better. If the point isn't to deliver a message to Washington then ...? Leahy had emailed those involved with the St. Louis protest, and many others, to ask our thoughts on the matter. Unfortunately, the tea party protest organized by the common citzenery at the town hall meeting in St. Louis was not mentioned anywhere on the group's site despite being all over the news.

Granted, you are always going to have instances where people are not going to get along, where people will quibble over direction, et al. I guess I thought that this movement would be excluded from those problems because I felt as though everyone really had the best interest of the movement at heart; plus, everyone was doing a good job of delivering the message on their own websites.

I wasn't shocked that there was turbulence; rather I was floored, beyond floored, actually, when I saw that some had chosen to take this fight public because doing so cost us credibility. It's a horrible strategy for the meager goal of winning an argument. Taking it public was petty and in my opinion, showed a disrespect for the hard work of so many.

I'm not excluding anyone from blame however, this reaction is a disproportionate response to the behavior they allege caused the rift in the first place because it compromised an entire movement. It's embarrassing and causes me and so many other people to question the dedication of anyone would would react so adversely as to jeopardize what hundreds of thousands of people have worked to accomplish. It hurts me even more because I really respected what each of these people did and to see this sort of thing going on ... I just know that we're better than this.

So now we have two tea party sites, the one mentioned above which also sent out the email and whose members have made public remarks, and the one created by Leahy and a group of others, called the national Tea Party Coalition.

Because I want to help, I feel compelled to pitch my hat in the ring of one of these national groups. Judging by what I've seen these past several days, I choose the latter, as it seems friendlier and most importantly, active; though it is my sincerest hope that conservatives can, as one of my all-time favorite hymns states, "get right and let's go home" and unify.

Please.

Let's focus on what's next for TCOT the movement and work to unify the Tea Party message.