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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
