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I'm a Tea Partier. I attend Tea Parties. I'm on my local Tea Party emailing list. I attend the meetings. I contribute.

I was not in favor of the timing of Rep. Bachmann's speech.....as great as the content was.

I also do not like the idea of Tea Party caucuses on the Hill.

The beauty and glory of the Tea Party is its independence, no affiliation with an existing political party, not being personality-driven by political celebrities, not being identified with GOP pols in the loathed D.C...... and not cohering into an organized standing target by its enemies.

All day yesterday, on EVERY half-hour spot of network radio news in my area I heard the announcer state that "the GOP response will be given by Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann". Read that again.

I'm a Freeper, I'm here, I'm clear....I'm Tea Party all the way....and I'm with good guy Joe Walsh.

He was seeing beyond one night.

Leni

Leni I agree with your comments but I think it would have been much better if Joe Walsh hadn’t held up Michelle Bachmann for ridicule. We get enough of that from the Left.

Wouldn’t it have been better to talk amongst themselves this early on with so much hate coming from the Left, and expressed his views privately? He shouldn’t have said it.

If he felt there was some good reason to point her out to the media to get some important word out to the voters, of course he should speak up. But who was served by his comments?

How soon the young surfer, lifted to new shores and flirtatious attentions, can dismiss the effect of the brave patriotic souls who did the cannonball into the bay of sharks which produced today’s righteous waves.

Bachmann was dumping tea into the rhetorical harbor long before membership in one or the other new loosely affiliated group was cool. And she will still be fighting socialists and politely thumping fellow party members until the day that the well-intentioned Right finally gets over the silly notion that gathering in the streets and holding banners IS the end goal.

“The beauty and glory of the Tea Party is its independence,...”

Independence from success is hardly a winning strategy.

Is your flavor of TEA not available to the folks most able to help achieve your goal?

What exactly IS your goal?

Is it simply to rally, rally, rally, bitch, bitch, bitch and then to bad mouth anyone official who listens and can help?

I’ve partied with the TEA folk. They are great. I believed the speeches they made locally here saying we demand government listen to us. I miss those logical days.

The enemy press cannot divide us. That is an inside job.

If we now stand in fear that two very similar and sympathetic voices of Freedom are one too many, then our steps toward both their worthy goals will never come. And if you are waiting for the “network radio news” to announce when we can move, then you better take a seat right now.

I don’t know much about this guy “Joe the Bummer”, but Michele is a leader.

I’ve tried following accommodators. Nearly broke my nose.

I assume, by logical extension of the ‘timing’ argument,
that if Michele and Sarah, Rush and Hannity, Demint and Paul, Sowell and Williams had ALL given responses that night then our goals would be even more ill served.

Good thing we did not try that, eh? Freedom might have really taken it in the shorts.

I also do not like the idea of Tea Party caucuses on the Hill
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I’m divided on it.

On one hand it makes sense, there are no Congressperson (TP) only (D), (I) and (R’s) and as Bachmann put it...”We are the receptacle” and they don’t claim to be the leaders, run it or any such thing.

Many Congresscritters will not take email etc from people who aren’t in their district. The caucus is a central ‘inbox’ of sorts— where Tea Party members can express their concerns, ideas and all that.

I think the TPC can possibly offer a fuller representation of the Tea Party ideals on legislation, than we could do alone in our districts.

The down side I see is that when money and donors get too involved— it opens the door wider to corruption and skews interests.

I also worry some will see it as strictly a republican group because mostly it is the republicans in congress that are interested in Tea Party ideas and values, some of them are Tea Party members themselves.

If Palin was elected— would she have to stay away from the Tea Party because she’s a republican and holds office? What about Walsh, Paul or Rubio, must they now drop their affiliation or claims of being a Tea partier—they are elected Republicans.

I think there is a point to where the Tea Party can be too jealously guarded as to make it unattractive and exclusive to others—when that was what was trying to be avoided in the first place.