Something for the "Hilarious or Terrifying?" file, I guess.
Remember Howard Dean's rallying cry that he was from the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party?" That kind of turf claiming may be getting more popular on the other side of the aisle, as self-ID'd Tea Partyers this week began their fight over who represents the Tea Party wing of the Tea Party.
Don't get confused yet. We've barely gotten started.
On Tuesday, conservative megaphone The Washington Times ran a story entitled Finally, Romney gets tea party support, announcing that Russ Walker, the vice-president of Dick Armey's FreedomWorks group, a major organizing (and bankrolling) force behind 2010's Tea Madness, was apparently warming, or resigned, to a Romney nomination.
“It is a statistical fact that the numbers favor Mitt Romney,” FreedomWorks Vice President Russ Walker told The Times on Tuesday. “We are dedicated to defeating Obama and electing a conservative Senate that will help Romney repeal Obamacare and address the nation’s economic and spending challenges.”
While the
Mellon-funded FreedomWorks has been as frightened of the "Countdown to Loving Mitt Romney Clock" as the famous
Mr. Colbert, the more nakedly Koch-connected Americans for Prosperity, after a brief
Anybody But Mitt moment in New Hampshire, has been more forgiving of late, inviting the former governor to speak at it's
Prosperity Forum event in Michigan before that state's primary, and again at their upcoming
Saving the American Dream wingding in Wisconsin.
With FreedomWorks apparently climbing in the car-top carrier, it seemed that at least the Corporate wing of the Tea Party had coalesced around his Mittness. For a day.
Yesterday, a spokesman for FreedomWorks told the DailyCaller the Mittmance wasn't on.
“We never got our natural candidate,” spokesman Adam Brandon told TheDC on Wednesday. “We’re focusing on the Senate, but watching the [Republican presidential] race to see if it heads to a brokered convention, and it looks like it might, to see if we can get someone else in.”
The message was reiterated today, this time by a FreedomWorks spokeswoman who told
ABC News, "The headline was pretty misleading. We're not backing Romney for president at all."
So the official TP, which of course to a true TPer is never the real TP, is officially either behind or against Mitt.
Meanwhile, things are just as muddly clear at RedState, where columnist Bob Howe gives homage to the old Edwin Edwards slogan in "Vote for the Etch a Sketch. It's Important,"
a seemingly oh-well pro-Mitt piece which, nonetheless, gives winking props to the strange video offering from Ben Shapiro, which seems to both admit that the nomination of Romney is inevitable while attempting to rally the troops to graduate from Tea Partyers to "Minutemen," ready at a moment's call to rise up with rusty weapons to strike guerrilla blows at the "moderate," even "liberal," GOP.
I really don't know; you tell me. At least enjoy the bad-lawyer-commercial hand gestures.
So, that's the story this week from TP land. They're either resigned to Mitt or determined to blow up the convention to get anybody else. And if they don't get their way, they'll either bite the bullet for downballot or keep it dry to fire at John Boehner. Or you.
Or something. I can't make head or tail of it, and delving into those sources trying has been like snorting PCP and smoking menthols to stay awake driving--I know I'll get to my destination eventually, but I'm not sure who I'll be when I do.