The Florida Tea Party, Republican Conspiracy Theory and the Loyalists of the Ruling Establishment

The Florida TEA Party has officially nominated twenty candidates for the state legislature. From a press release published at Third Party and Independent Daily:

Florida TEA Party Chairman Fred O'Neal announced that twenty (20) candidates for the Florida legislature met qualifying deadline today to qualify for the November general election. All would have the word 'TEA' appear on the ballot next to their name and are the official nominees of the TEA party.

"We promised months ago that Republicans that merely talked about lower taxes but then voted for bigger government would be targeted. Today, incoming Florida Speaker of the House Dean Cannon, incoming Florida Senate President Mike Haridopolos, and Democrat leader Ron Saunders all have Florida TEA Party opponents," said O'Neal.

"We will expose these RINO Republicans as the frauds that they are. Taxpayers have a right to a real choice and the TEA Party will give it to them."

This news will come as no surprise to regular readers of Poli-Tea and TPID. Darcy Richardson stated as much in a commentary published at TPID almost three weeks ago, in which he considered the prospects for third party and independent candidates for office this November: "The party's best showings, however, might take place in some of the state legislative races, where the Tea Party could end up with as many as twenty-five candidates." Not surprisingly, Republicans have responded to the official announcement by asserting that the Florida TEA Party is part of an elaborate Democratic conspiracy, aided by the help of the liberal media and the forces of darkness. From the Buzz Blog via Independent Political Report:

As election qualifying ended Friday, the dust settled with a dozen or more tea party candidates challenging state lawmakers in contested races.

Republicans see a conspiracy theory: a number of the tea party candidates are former Democrats, some appear financially strapped to pay the $1,800 filing and others are filing to run in districts far away from their listed address. A number of the seats are also targeted by Democrats for takeover.

"The recent flurry of last minute filings by so –called “tea party candidates” looks awfully suspicious," said GOP Chairman John Thrasher in a statement. "While a few tea-party candidates across the state do have ties to the tea party movement, in the majority of instances, it appears that the Democrats have coordinated a dishonest attempt to hide phony candidates behind the name “tea party” and to confuse voters who may be supportive of the tea party movement, effectively stealing votes from true conservative candidates and injuring the grassroots tea party movement as a whole."

Of course, Republicans seek to pretend that the only legitimate "tea party" activists are tea party activists who support the Republican Party. But any self-described "tea party activist" who is not an advocate of political independence but rather just one more mouthpiece for the two-party establishment is effectively a traitor to the revolution. As I wrote back in February:

Tea party activists who advocate infiltration of the Democratic-Republican Party rather than independent and third party opposition to the Democratic-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government would do well to re-open their history books. Imagine if, in the aftermath of the Boston Tea Party, colonists had not maintained their determination to achieve political independence, but rather sought accommodation with the British parliament and crown. Imagine if these colonists argued that the best way forward was not opposition to and confrontation with the ruling political establishment, but rather that the best strategy was to join with the Tories and Whigs in the British Parliament under the heel of the King to cement the relations of power that led to the groundswell of political discontent in the first place. Of course, there were such colonists. They sided with the crown against the revolutionaries and were derided as Loyalists by the Patriots of the American revolution. Sadly, in today's tea party movement, true patriots can be difficult to find while loyalists are a dime a dozen. Worse yet, the latter are even celebrated for their political cowardice and their reactionary support for the Democratic-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government.