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Tea Partier: ‘Boycott The National Tea Party Convention’

National Tea Party Convention organizer Judson Phillips

Yet another Tea Partier is sounding the alarm about the upcoming National Tea Party Convention and questioning the motives of its organizer.

Shane Brooks worked closely with convention organizer Judson Phillips and his Tea Party Nation (TPN) group, until a falling out last month in part over what Brooks saw as TPN’s overly close relationship with the GOP, which Brooks distrusts. Now, Brooks, based in Texas, has posted a YouTube video urging fellow activists to “boycott the National Tea Party Convention,” and declaring, “we will not allow Tea Party Nation or any group to achieve national leadership of this historic grassroots revolution by the people!”

Brooks’s video also voices fears that the Republican Party aims to move in and co-opt the Tea Party movement. “We must not allow the Tea Parties and other patriotic grassroots movement to be hijacked by the GOP,” it warns.


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Several Tea Party activists have recently accused Phillips of seeking to profit financially from the convention, at which Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are scheduled to speak. And a major sponsor recently pulled out, citing concerns over the financial arrangements. And RedState founder Erick Erickson wrote that the confab “smelled scammy.”

But Brooks’s ambitions appear to extend beyond criticizing Phillips and the convention. He also calls urges activists to “challenge the two-party corruption,” and promotes an outfit known as GOOOH, or “Get Out Of Our House,” which aims to unseat incumbent lawmakers of both parties this fall.

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