Party Foul! Tea Partiers Eat Their Own In Bitter Internal Feud

Zachary Roth | November 12, 2009, 5:08PM

The Tea Party movement is being ripped apart by bitter internal rancor, highlighted by a lawsuit against a former leader, vituperative name-calling, and charges of financial mismanagement and corruption.

As we told you this morning, board members for the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) this week filed suit against Amy Kremer, a former TPP leader who fell out with the group over her involvement with a rival Tea Party faction, the Tea Party Express. And on Tuesday, a judge granted a preliminary injunction, ordering Kremer to return control of the TPP websites to the board, and to stop representing herself as a TPP spokeswoman.

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Topics: Amy Kremer, Health Care, Right-wing extremism, Tea Parties, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots

Amy Kremer

Former Tea Party Leader Says Ex-Comrades Are Suing Her

Zachary Roth | November 12, 2009, 11:10AM

Amy Kremer

The Tea Party movement is in danger of being ripped apart by internal rancor.

For months, the Tea Party Patriots have been embroiled in a dispute with a former leader, Amy Kremer, over her involvement with the Tea Party Express, a rival faction of Tea Partiers which the Patriots see as inauthentic and overly tied to the GOP.

And now Kremer has revealed that TPP is suing her.

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Topics: Amy Kremer, Right-wing extremism, Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots

David McKalip

In Tea Party Civil War, McKalip Appears To Ditch Former Comrades In Favor Of GOP Consultants

Zachary Roth | October 21, 2009, 4:13PM

Tea-Partiers, and Dr. David McKalip (inset)

In a bitter internecine feud that is creating serious divisions in the Tea Party movement, David McKalip -- the Florida doctor and health-care reform foe who got in hot water this summer after forwarding a racist picture showing President Obama as a witch doctor -- appears to have sided with a group run by GOP consultants, rather than with his former grassroots allies.

In an email to fellow members of the Tea Party Patriots, sent yesterday and obtained by TPMmuckraker, Texas-based activist Gerald Merits wrote that he has been "approached by a neurosurgeon very active in the movement in Florida asking for me to get involved with the Tea Party Express because the Tea Party Patriots just don't seem to get it."