Tea Party Expels Leader

Tea party leader expelled for blog post: Internal strife erupts when Mark Williams posts an imaginary letter to Abraham Lincoln.

Tea party group expels leader for ‘clearly offensive’ blog post: Mark Williams, the tea party leader who wrote a blog post this week calling the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) racist, has been "expelled" from the National Tea Party Federation. Williams wrote the blog post on Thursday in response to the NAACP's Tuesday declaration accusing the tea party movement of tolerating racist elements in its midst (see The Upshot's rundown on the week of attacks and counterattacks here). It was written as an imaginary letter to President Abraham Lincoln and accused the NAACP of being racist for using the word "colored" in its name. When some reacted to it in outrage, Williams deleted it from his website, declaring it time to "move forward." The National Tea Party Federation apparently decided to move forward without Williams. Spokesman David Webb said on Face the Nation this morning that Williams and his Tea Party Express had been pushed out because Williams' posting was "clearly offensive." The tea party movement has been growing in influence in American politics since it began as a series of rallies in 2009. Candidates endorsed by local and national organizations that are a part of the coalition have won surprising victories over establishment Republican Party candidates in states like Kentucky and Nevada. Part of their challenge, however -- especially in handling broader debates about what they "are" -- is that there isn't a single Tea Party that speaks for all tea party activists. Rather, there are dozens of national and local organizations that loosely coordinate and all emerged in opposition to Wall Street bailouts that occurred under Presidents Bush and Obama and what they perceive as the Obama Administration's efforts to expand the role of government. The question of whether or not it also has racial motivations has dogged it since the beginning. National Tea Party Federation's expulsion of Williams and the Tea Party Express could be the first of many internal disputes to define the national tea party identity.

UPDATE: Williams responded to his "expulsion" Sunday, attacking the "self-interested treachery" within tea party leadership.