The St. Louis Tea Party is NOT A "Bottom-Up" Organization

St. Louis tea partier Jim Durbin recently cited an online poll to justify why the St. Louis Tea Party opposed Proposition A (the sales tax for public transportation):

The measure was opposed by 93% of the Tea Party online respondents, but supported by many civic leaders, many Republicans, and backed with over $1.5 million dollars in spending, including a GOTV program from left-wing groups, sophisticated marketing and direct mail campaigns, and of course, threats of doom from politicians and Metro management.

However, in a different online poll, tea party members overwhelmingly supported Chuck Purgason over Roy Blunt, 64% to 25%. In that case, the tea party leadership decided to ignore the results.

So the tea party leadership puts out online polls, uses them as evidence when they fit with what they want to do, and then ignores them or dismisses them as "non-scientific" when they doesn't fit with what they want to do. In other words, the leadership does what they want and always pretends that it's "from the people." It's worth noting that the St. Louis Tea Party leadership was never voted on. The tea party was founded by Loesch and Hennessy, who then could decide who else gets to call themselves "leadership." Which is all perfectly fine, if only they stopped trying to pretend to be merely an expression of the "will of the grassroots."