Centuries Apart 'Tea Party' Patriots Share Common Troubles

March 11, 2010 - PRLog -- With apologies to composer Meredith Willson's tune "Ya Got Trouble" from his iconic musical, "The Music Man," today's "Tea Party" movement has trouble with a capital "T":

Trouble, oh we got trouble!
    Big-politics trouble with a capital "T"
And that rhymes with "D"
    And that's "Dumbo's" tool.

We've surely got trouble, terrible trouble
    Right here in Party City
Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock and the Golden Rule?

Oh, we got trouble
    We got big, big trouble...
With a capital "T" that rhymes with "C"
    And that stands for cool.

We've surely got trouble!
    Terrible trouble
With a capital "T" that rhymes with one "P"
    Makes a Donkey's fool.

Trouble, oh we got trouble!
    Right here in Party City
'Cause ya need two "P's" that rhyme with "T"
    And that stands for true

Tea Party Patriots™ (TPP), the "official grassroots American movement", just blew out its first-year birthday candle on Feb. 27, but only family and a few friends went public to celebrate the life of this political two-party orphan.

In America's virtual "looking glass" of 2010 politics, Alice and the Mad Hatter would have to join forces with the colonial Sons of Liberty to find an authentic "tea Party" in this frantic election-year's Wonderland of Purple State, Red State or Blue.

Since the "Massachusetts' Miracle" election of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA), which drew support nationwide from the "Tea Party" movement, media pundits have been digging to find the "grassroots"--not the "Astro-Turf" spoken of by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi--at "Tea Party" rallies.

But who knew "Astro-Turf" could grow weeds and make "grassroots" sound like "underground"?

Between the National Tea Party Convention (last month) in Nashville, the California Republican Party 2010 Spring Convention in Santa Clara, CA (March 12) and the upcoming "Tea Party Express III: Just Vote Them Out" nationwide tour, soon to leave Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's hometown of Searchlight, NV (March 27), "tea parties" are blooming like union pickets at a budget meeting in Sacramento, CA.

"It's a calculated effort to raise money and to confuse the "Tea Party" brand," says Dawn Wildman, who is California Co-coordinator and a member of the National Board of the Tea Party Patriots™ (TPP).

TPP stands alone and distant from partisan politics, but sees the term "Tea Party" being used as a tool for Democrat distortions and Republican profiteers.

On March 13, the Tea Party Express (TPE) will pull up to the Santa Clara Convention Center at 2 p.m. to attend the California Republican Party 2010 Springs Convention. Voila! Two Republican-backed enterprises sharing the same turf, attempting to woo donors and candidates while foraging for some "grassroots" Republicans.

"By us being there, I'm sure people will be wondering, 'Is the Republican Party selling out to the 'Tea Party'? or "Is the Tea Party selling out to the Republican Party?'" TPE spokesman Joe Wierzbicki, told SFGate.com on March 8. (Wierzbicki is also an employee of Russo, Marsh and Rogers, a Republican consulting firm cited below.) "People can have that discussion. I'm sure it's a little bit of both."

That's the kind of remark that publicly links the "Tea Party" Movement to the GOP, but to "grassroots" patriots, it's like inviting an elephant for a cup of tea to Boston Harbor on Dec. 16, 1773. The pachyderm is in the way and out of place.

"Tea Party Express" (TPE) is the brainchild of the Republican public relations firm Russo, Marsh and Rogers (RMR) in Sacramento, CA. TPE franchise partners include Our Country Deserves Better PAC, MarkTalk (Mark Williams, vice-chairman of OCDB/PAC), the Howard Jarvis Tax Payers Association, Grassfire. org and ResistNet.com.

TPE/OCDB political action committee is a major golden goose for RMR, raising $1.9 million in 2009 with "76% of Our Country DeservesBetter PAC's $1.33 million total spending for the period of June through November 2009 (going to) Russo, Marsh and Rogers or entities closely associated with it." (See www.smirkingchimp.com or TPMmuckraker and a Dec. 28, 2009 article by Zachary Roth for Talking Points Memo.)

Mark Williams is a prominent spokesman for the TPE and has a history of provocative, manic pronouncements. They range from a September 2009 email deriding President Barack Obama as "our half white, racist president", to being on the ear-piece end of a freak-out by MSNBC host Dyland Ratigan (March 2) scolding Williams for not rooting out "wingnuts" and people who want to "kill blacks and Jews." Williams was left speechless, but Ratigan got a self-proclaimed "tea partier" tarred and feathered with the "R" word.

Williams also likes to align himself with the "grassroots" Tea Party Patriots™ (TPP). In his self-published book, "Taking Back America One Tea Party at a Time," Williams identifies himself as "...one of the founding Tea Party Patriots and the chairman of the now-famous Tea Party Express." (Search www.lulu.com).

That's like saying Royal Massachusetts Gov. Thomas Hutchinson was a Son of Liberty. He refused to let three ships off-load in  Boston Harbor without paying the colonial tea tax. (The Sons of Liberty did the job on Dec. 16, 1773).

Williams was not one of the four founders of TPP.

The four TPP founders are Attorney Mark Meckler of Sacramento, Rob Neppell, Jenny Beth Martin and Amy Kremer, who left the Tea Party Patriots™ last Fall to become the director of the Tea Party Express Grassroots Coalition. (TPP is in a legal battle to sever Kremer's use of the brand).

The Tea Party Patriots™ mission is to inform and inspire Americans to preserve individual liberty, Constitutional governance and conservative fiscal values. It is not affiliated with any political party. It is a social welfare organization under 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code and does not endorse candidates for public office.

The "Tea Party" movement is political botox for a maturing conservative class of voters weary of compromised Republican principles and wary of Progressive policies on steroids.

To discover if you are at an authentic "Tea Party" gathering these days, you have to be part patriot and part private investigator. The key task is to find out if the event sponsor is affiliated with TPP by checking the national web site at www.teapartypatriots.org.

"Tea Party" inspsires tales of the origins of this nation and images of patriots disquised as Indians tossing trunks of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor in December 1773.

Compared side-by-side, the 21st-century Tea Party Patriots™ and the 18th-century Sons of Liberty have much in common: a small group of leaders, "branding", outrage at "taxation without representation" and an ache for liberty.

Sons of Liberty was a formal "underground" term for those resisting taxes and laws put on the American colonies by the British Crown. Handbills referred to them by many names including: "True Born Sons of Liberty," "Sons of Freedom" the "Loyal Nine" and "Liberty Boys." Those loyal to the Crown also dubbed the rebels, "Sons of Violence" and "Sons of Iniquity."

Prominent leaders of Sons of Liberty included Charles Thomson, Paul Revere, Haym Solomon, John Hancock, Isaac Sears, John Adams and his second cousin, Samuel Adams.

Sons of Liberty used to post their messages on "Liberty Poles" in public meeting places, so anyone in "the whole of political society" could respond to anonymous summons--before British troops cut down the poles.

For now, the Tea Party Patriots™ will count on the reliability of the telephone pole.

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Press contact: Dawn Wildman 619-606-0337

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