No one ever accused the Tea Party movement of having an intellectual foundation, but this is just embarrassing.
The tea party, a movement whose success on the grassroots level is in many ways attributable to the power of free and open Internet communications, is joining the growing conservative crusade against the FCC's plan to enforce net neutrality on internet service providers. According to one tea partier involved in the effort, the movement is opposing net neutrality because "it's an affront to free speech and free markets."
[Note to traditional media: when the teabaggers are defending the rights of corporations, they're not populists.]
A group of 35 teabagger organizations signed up with a bunch of conservative organizations to send a letter to the FCC "calling on the government agency to keep its hand off the Internet."
One of the groups who signed the letter was the Fountain Hills Tea Party in Arizona. Like many, many grassroots tea party groups across the country, Fountain Hills has a Ning social networking site, as well as a more traditional homepage, both key to communicating with members. Supporters of net neutrality often suggest that it's smaller sites like these that would suffer the most under the tiered Internet plan ISPs are expected to establish if no government rules require them to treat all Internet traffic equally.
Of course, it could be that the teabaggers aren't worried about tiered service because FreedomWorks or whatever corporate interests are behind this new anti-net neutrality organizing force will foot any premium charges to move teabagger content quickly and efficiently. If the fees aren't just waived by sympathetic ISPs (or ISPs pressured into doing so by FreedomWorks-paid lobbying/pressure campaigns).