Some major cracks have emerged in the "Tea Party" movement's leadership.
In October, Amy Kremer, a founder and top staffer for the Tea Party Patriots (whose activists swarmed health care town halls last summer) was forced out of the group for joining a second, more "moderate" Tea Party organization -- the Tea Party Express. Now, the Tea Party Patriots have filed a lawsuit against Kremer and issued a temporary restraining order because she tried to lock down TPP resources on her way out.
The Tea Party Patriots describe the conflict with Kremer as an "intellectual property" dispute. On Kremer's personal blog, (about me: "A genuine Southern Belle with a passion for life, politics and current events... Oh yeah, did I say I am a conservative?!?") she writes that the lawsuit is "frivolous."
... Dave Weigel, who has been reporting on this story since it began, noted in October the growing friction between the Tea Party Patriots and the Tea Party Express. The Tea Party Patriots is a grassroots organization, while the Tea Party Express is a more corporate "astroturf" offshoot of the conservative Our Country Deserves Better PAC:
"As an organization, we do our best to be completely nonpartisan," said Mark Meckler, a national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. "That's one of things that's allowed us to survive when we were called Republican tools. Tea Party Patriots are very dissatisfied with the Republican Party -- we have nothing against Our Country Deserves Better PAC, but they raise money for Republicans."
Of course, this type of thing has been happening since time began ....
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