It’s been a week of smelly cannon smoke coming out of the Tea Party. Mark Williams,  the nominal leader of one of the groups making up the national federation let loose with a racist rant disguised as satire.   He thought himself very clever to pen a letter to President Abraham Lincoln:

“We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don’t cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop!”  [Full letter]

Then David Webb, another leader  –of the leaderless movement– appeared on Sunday talk shows to say that not only Williams but his whole “Tea Party Express” had been expelled from the Federation.

Williams replied by “saying that there is no Tea Party leadership. No one could expel him, or police the organizations due to their widely different views and structures. He went on to add that this was a publicity stunt by the leaders of the United Tea Party Federation to try to gain legitimacy as a national organization.”

And in fact this looks like a case of the tail trying to wag the dog.  The Tea Party Express, with Williams, a notorious right wing talk show host in the celebrity limelight, is the biggest of the various self-constituted groups.  It has raised the most money and attracted high value endorsements from Palin and others.   Here’s a little summary of the TPers.

It’s such fun to see a bunch of loose cannons firing away at each other. We can hardly wait for the next round — with all the D.C. media circling round to make it into something much more than it is.   We hope those genuinely interested in the welfare of the country can see through the acrid smoke, hear through the thunder and get on board with folks doing real and necessary work.