Let’s Be Clear: Dick Armey is NOT the Tea Party

Dick Armey and FreedomWorks and his TPE bus is NOT the tea party.

Just as we were regretting the fact that FreedomWorks did not honor our request to stay out of NH this election cycle, this article popped up on World Net Daily. Joseph Farah knows what a real tea party is and agrees that FreedomWorks isn’t it. He explains: “The danger to the tea-party movement has always been that Washington insiders would attempt to hijack it for their own purposes and political agenda. One man who has clearly attempted to do that is former House majority leader Dick Armey with his well-funded organization FreedomWorks.”

As we’ve explained on our About page, our group was born of the true tea party movement that started on December 16, 2007. A couple of us were sitting in a CNHT meeting talking with another person and we decided to form the Coalition and invite all center/right groups to support the ‘mission’ of the original tea party — which is to inform, educate, and motivate. We have done this now for almost 3 years as the very first statewide coalition in the country.

But then along came pre-existing groups who deemed themselves ‘tea party organizers’. They called, they emailed, they pestered, they begged. They wanted to ‘organize’ us, they wanted our membership lists, and I’m sure they were looking for donations. Worse yet, these outsiders wanted to vet our NH candidates for us!

We politely but firmly said NO thanks, we will not be hijacked by some Washington insiders. We also asked that they keep out of NH’s elections, and refrain from endorsing any particular candidate. Real tea parties do NOT endorse or tell their members for whom they should vote.

Unfortunately for us, FreedomWorks did not listen. FreedomWorks brought its bus here at least twice, and worse yet, Sarah Palin could not resist throwing a monkey wrench into our elections by ‘endorsing’ a Senate candidate about whom she likely knew little. She will now be forever credited with having prevented a ‘real’ conservative from being our Senate nominee in NH.

We regret that FreedomWorks did not honor our initial requests not to interfere. However, we cannot tell our member groups or members what to do, so if they chose to visit the bus to be entertained last night, so be it. They should simply be aware of who these people really are.

WMUR reported: “The crowd saved some of its biggest cheers for conservative favorites that did not survive their primaries, including Jack Kimball and Ovide Lamontagne.” We are surprised that Ovide Lamontagne would even show up at the foolish display since it can be said that his candidacy was the very one that was sabotaged by the Tea Party Express and Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Kelly Ayotte…

We wonder where all these people, happy to dance around like fools in front of these DC insiders, will be on town and school meeting day here in NH? That’s where the taxes are raised.

We wanted to set the record straight for those who think we’ve been hijacked by DC insiders. We have not, and we won’t be any time soon.

As Farah says of Armey: “This is not his movement. He has no right dictating the rules of engagement. He has no right asserting his leadership over it. Dick Armey and FreedomWorks simply represent the old guard of the Republican establishment doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Indeed.