[Darren McCarty]

It is not a political party, so it does not have a formal agenda, or platform, and does not have an organization and democratically elected leadership. It is impossible to know who’s in it, who’s behind it, or what its true purpose is.

The good thing about tea parties (plural) are ideals. The bad thing is that many that are organized tend to have big fish in small pond syndrome and it becomes ego, not ideas. As far as "democratically elected" leadership goes, that's for members of that party to decide, not you.

The Tea Party is not allowed to coalesce into America’s new Second party to replace the Republican.

Because VOTERS do not allow third parties to be anything but spoilers. Third parties always failed, fail now, and fail in the future.

[Berosus]

I know of ONE time in history when a third party became a major party. In the 1850s the Whig Party disintegrated, and the Free Soil Party absorbed enough Whigs and anti-slavery Democrats to take the place of the Whigs. At that point, its members felt it needed a new name, and because nobody else was calling themselves “Republican” at that point, they went with that. Therefore, in order for the Tea Party to succeed, either the Democrats or country-club Republicans have to go.

[cripplecreek]

The good thing about tea parties (plural) are ideals. The bad thing is that many that are organized tend to have big fish in small pond syndrome and it becomes ego, not ideas.

Our little informal group was targeted by some clown from the far side of the state who wasn't who he claimed he was. Fortunately we were unanimous in our opposition to unneeded organization. He wanted contact lists and a single person to act as a liaison for him to contact directly.

We know each other by name and have no need for leadership because we're like minded local people who happen to meet for breakfast a couple times per month and chat about various issues and politicians.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Because VOTERS do not allow third parties to be anything but spoilers. Third parties always failed, fail now, and fail in the future.

While I cannot say I have been particularly active in TEA Party undertakings, I did attend the first TEA Party National Convention in Nashville at the Opryland Hotel in February 2010. I saw Sarah Palin and Andrew Breitbart speak, among others.

In talking with others at the event, one thing we were virtually all in agreement on was that we did NOT want to form a 3rd party. Most of the folks there were old enough to have seen where that led, with Perot and others.

Instead, we saw it as obvious that the Republican Party was where we needed to focus our efforts, as they gave at least some lip service to fiscal sanity.