Tea Party Leaders Promote Themselves On the Backs of Naive Membership

I've reported before that, despite what they claim, the St. Louis Tea Party is not democratic, and their leaders are clearly using other people for their own personal notoriety and enrichment. The reality is that a small group of people make the decisions of what the group will do (like their ill-advised decision to fight against public transportation), and that same small group attempts to take credit for all of the people who attended rallies, or voted Republican, or whatever. Carl Bearden provides an example of a case in point:

Testimony was even given that the members of the St Louis Tea Party Association opposed the return of local control to the citizens of St Louis...

Anyway, I thought the report of the opposition of the St Louis Tea Party Association was rather odd so I checked it out. I found out that it was true that the Board of Directors of the St Louis Tea Party oppose the local control issue. But no “vote” of the members/supporters was taken.

In other words, the tea party claims to be a huge group of people across the St. Louis region. Then, a small, unelected Board of Directors makes decisions and even goes to Jefferson City to announce their position on controversial issues without even consulting the membership! So you have, what, 5 or 10 people claiming to speak on behalf of 5,000, without even actually consulting any of the people. In fact, they didn't even bother to announce on any of their blogs that they were planning on going to Jefferson City to "state the Tea Party position" on local control. No doubt those same self-appointed leaders use political positions like local control to curry favor with political players and to enhance themselves. They are, and always have been, about enhancing themselves rather than fighting for conservative ideals.