The latest bogus grassroots effort from the tea parties is the site iamtheteapartyleader.com (NOTE: see update 2 below before visiting it now) at which the Tea Party "Patriots" encourage their followers to upload videos of them saying "I am the Tea Party Leader". This is a take-off on the "I am Spartacus" line from that movie and a reference to a Democratic Party attempt to do opposition research on their (real) leaders. Needless to say, the reference fails, casting Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, Grover Norquist, the Koch family and the like in the Kirk Douglas role. Plus, the Democratic Party isn't going to crucify anyone.

My response video is below or to the right; the link in the video is to the post about the Contract from America. They claim that theirs is a "leaderless movement"; if so, perhaps one of those who thinks they're a leader of the movement could explain why that Contract doesn't say a word about immigration.

From their page:

According to Andrew Breitbart, Bill Clinton and James Carville are planning personal 'deep opposition research on 7-8 national leaders' active in the tea party movement... It is un-American and morally wrong for a former president to attack Americans who have gotten involved in the political system.

There's no proof yet that they're even planning anything and even if they are there's no indication of what it would involve. It's certainly disreputable to smear people using lies, misleading statements, and purely personal matters and it's not like Carville is a choirboy. However, they aren't government officials and anything they'll do will almost certainly be based on publicly-available statements and the like. So, it's not in any way "un-American" or "morally wrong".

Note: this new effort was, of course, promoted by Glenn Reynolds (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/94220). Also, at post time, there are two or three dozen videos on Youtube with people mouthing the line they want them to say; most of them have few or no other videos in their accounts.

UPDATE: A look at a few shows that they're both bad and sad. One of them features a Henry Rollins lookalike with a Revolutionary War-style rifle ( peekURL.com/v27wo16 ); the description is:

To Mr. Clinton and Mr. Carville: I am the Tea Party Leader. Semper Fidelis.

At the worst (assuming the Breitbart story is true), Clinton and Carville will be slinging mud at Beltway hacks like Dick Armey. The tea partiers could strike against them if they were smart and didn't have emotional problems. Instead, their leaders are encouraging things like that the video.The latest bogus grassroots effort from the tea parties is the site iamtheteapartyleader.com at which the Tea Party "Patriots" encourage their followers to upload videos of them saying "I am the Tea Party Leader". This is a take-off on the "I am Spartacus" line from that movie and a reference to a Democratic Party attempt to do opposition research on their (real) leaders. Needless to say, the reference fails, casting Dick Armey of FreedomWorks, Grover Norquist, the Koch family and the like in the Kirk Douglas role. Plus, the Democratic Party isn't going to crucify anyone.

My response video is below or to the right; the link in the video is to the post about the Contract from America. They claim that theirs is a "leaderless movement"; if so, perhaps one of those who thinks they're a leader of the movement could explain why that Contract doesn't say a word about immigration.

From their page:

According to Andrew Breitbart, Bill Clinton and James Carville are planning personal 'deep opposition research on 7-8 national leaders' active in the tea party movement... It is un-American and morally wrong for a former president to attack Americans who have gotten involved in the political system.

There's no proof yet that they're even planning anything and even if they are there's no indication of what it would involve. It's certainly disreputable to smear people using lies, misleading statements, and purely personal matters and it's not like Carville is a choirboy. However, they aren't government officials and anything they'll do will almost certainly be based on publicly-available statements and the like. So, it's not in any way "un-American" or "morally wrong".

Note: this new effort was, of course, promoted by Glenn Reynolds (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/94220). Also, at post time, there are two or three dozen videos on Youtube with people mouthing the line they want them to say; most of them have few or no other videos in their accounts.

UPDATE: A look at a few shows that they're both bad and sad. One of them features a Henry Rollins lookalike with a Revolutionary War-style rifle ( peekURL.com/v27wo16 ); the description is:

To Mr. Clinton and Mr. Carville: I am the Tea Party Leader. Semper Fidelis.

At the worst (assuming the Breitbart story is true), Clinton and Carville will be slinging mud at Beltway hacks like Dick Armey. The tea partiers could strike against them if they were smart and didn't have emotional problems. Instead, their leaders are encouraging things like that the video.

UPDATE 2: Their website for this effort is no longer a Teaparty site but is some sort of Chinese sales site that looks like it's selling home shopping-type products or something. Visit it at your own risk. The fact that it's now a Chinese site is fitting considering that the Teaparty "patriots" are useful idiots for those who support not just loose immigration but free trade.