The conservative Tea Party movement in the United States is facing the classic dilemma of an early bloomer. Undergoing an explosive growth phase shortly after it surprised mainstream political America with its arrival in 2009, the party now appears to be stumbling, perhaps against its own better judgment, down the path of chaotic radicalism.
While insiders have known of divisions within the party for a while, the froth spilled over into the public domain this weekend when the Tea Party expelled one of its key leaders, Mark Williams, and the sub-group that he led within the party called the Tea Party Express, for a writing a satirical letter purportedly from “the Coloured People” to President Abraham Lincoln praising slavery.
The party's spokesman, David Webb, said: “We have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he wrote”.
His letter was said to be a response to earlier events, when the Tea Party found itself blinking in the spotlight after the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) passed a resolution labelling the party racist.
Some argue that at the heart of the party's problems is the lack of coherent leadership. Though it succeeded in “adopting” the former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, who sprang to the party's defence after the NAACP resolution, and made inroads into some of the primary elections this year, many in the mainstream regard that move to have edged the party even closer to the fringes of the political spectrum.
