So I've been enjoying reading about the Tea Party/Palin EPIC FAIL in Madison today in Librul in Madison's diary. Turns out an Americans for Prosperity bus from La Crosse had to be cancelled for lack of interest. Rather sad. Where's the old passion? Could it have faded so quickly? We can get the UW-La Crosse faculty to unionize, and they can't even muster up a subsidized busload of tea partiers to meet and greet Palin?
Oh, but it gets so much better!
One link leads to another. While trying to learn more about the phantom bus from La Crosse, I found the story becoming even richer.
The founder of the La Crosse Tea Party is Jake Speed. Say what you will of him, you have to love his name! And your heart has to go out to the guy. He has had a really bad April -- and it's only half over.
Speed was one of five candidates running in the Republican primary for the 94th state assembly seat, the election being held the same day as the Kloppenburg-Prosser election. Jake Speed did not do well. He came in fifth, with just 3% of the vote.
Since the primary, the knives have come out. The headline in Thursday's La Crosse Tribune: Support for unions drives wedge in tea party. Here's the lede:
Disagreement over public worker unions has led to a schism in the local tea party movement. Three men who met at a school board meeting have decided to form a new La Crosse tea party, but that doesn’t sit well with the founder of the existing group.
That would be Mr. Speed. He made a fatal blunder during the primary campaign. He showed some common sense and a basic level of respect for union workers:
Speed, who said during a candidate forum that he did not support the governor’s plan and thought the collective bargaining provision should be removed, defended his position, noting that school districts like Onalaska’s have used collective bargaining to save money.
This was too much for the Insurgent Tea Partiers. Tea Party Classic was just too mild for them:
“The local tea party is run by folks who are union supporters, so we thought we’d start our own,” said organizer Greg Luce, a computer programmer who said he recently moved from Florida to Stoddard. “We just didn’t want to belong to that group.”
Poor Jake now finds himself out-Tea-Partied:
Speed, chairman and founder of the group that has operated under the name La Crosse Tea Party since 2008, accuses the organizers of attempting to co-opt his 250-member organization. “If they want to start a tea party, that’s fine. More power to them,” he said. “But they can’t use our name.”
Hell of a month. You lose a primary in humiliating fashion. You get dissed by a Strong Tea Party guy WHO JUST MOVED TO WISCONSIN FROM FLORIDA!!! (Like that guy couldn't have stayed to assist Rick Scott in the destruction of Florida?) And you have to cancel a tea party bus to Madison for lack of interest. Jake, I actually do feel for you. You may be just a little wee bit more of a progressive Badger than you even realized, or care to admit. I mean... from FLORIDA? Can't you and I come to common ground on that? -- that we do NOT need ex-pat tea baggers coming here from Florida! I'd rather have them locally grown.
So there you go: I s**t you not, the Tea Party is splintering out there along the shores of the Mighty Mississippi. Only in Wisconsin....
UPDATE -- More info! I'm getting to like Jake Speed more and more! In a pre-election interview he showed some independence. Can't say as I agree with him on much, but I think I'd like him. (Sorry, Jake. This is NOT going to help you, I'm afraid.) Meanwhile, from his erstwhile colleagues comes this broadside (blogside?)!:
Jake Speed claimed on WIZM that we didn't have permission to use the Republican HQ which is simply not true. He also claimed that we been attacking him. Not true. The group is not about him....
The new group formed because we noticed a lack of activity from the Jake Speed's group [sic] especially in the wake of the whole collective bargaining debate. Come to find out Speed is siding with the government union bureaucrats. I am sorry, but if your [sic] going to claim to represent the Tea Party for La Crosse you better [sic] have Tea Party views or a change in direction is inevitable. The collective bargaining issue for government workers (who supposedly work for the tax payers) is not some small issue of disagreement within the Tea Party that can be easily overlooked. Jake Speed's position on the issue shows a lack of understanding on his part of what is necessary to get our government spending under control....
Speed claims that we have tired [sic] to steal his legally owned name of La Crosse Tea Party. Since when can you own the name Tea Party? From what I understand his group is called La Crosse Liberty Coalition LLC. The new Tea Party group is not going to make itself about Jake Speed or what his group is or isn't doing. We are a group of activist [sic] who are going to get active. Come and join us or get left behind!
Oh, the humanity!
UPDATE 2: I just need to highlight jmknapp's comment below, about the same phenomenon of pro-union tea partiers in Ohio. The voice of Mr. Rogers comes to me... "Can you say schism? Sure you can!"