As the George Allen roll-out continues [1], including his exclusive first interview with our own JR Hoeft [2], troubling but unsurprising news today from Tea Party land.
This email, forwarded to me from two different Tea Party leaders from different parts of the state, is gaining significant traction among various Tea Party factions across the Commonwealth. In response to the problems the Repeal Amendment is having in the legislature, the various Tea Party factions are calling on each other to bring attention to the candidacy of Jamie Radtke.
The only surprising part of this is that it took a month for this to come out, but represents the problems that Jamie Radtke is going to have among the rest of the Tea Party, let alone the Republican Party, its voters, independents, cross-voting Democrats, etc etc etc
The road to a Republican nomination just got much more difficult.
The real repeal the Virginia Tea Parties must focus on at this time is that of the rule by the self-appointed, self-serving, and self-promoting Jamie Radtke. While at it, the Virginia Tea Parties ought to tell Radtke they will not be used by her as a tool in her senatorial campaign.
If one wishes to see what kind of federalism, republicanism, rule of law, and liberty Radtke would promote in an office of high power, one should look no further than how she created, saddled, and ran the “Virginia Tea Party Patriots Federation (“VTPPF”). VTPPF did not come onto the scene through a mutual collaboration of the many organizations that today comprise it, but was conceived and launched by Radtke and her mentor, Attorney Patrick McSweeney, with the help of their cronies, tied to the Virginia RP establishment. Surrounded by cronies and sycophants, Radtke has run VTPPF as a generalissimo. Her agendas become VTPPF’s agendas, dissent is attenuated and discouraged, and the organizations unwilling to accept the legitimacy of Radtke’s nearly absolute rule have been refused VTPPF membership, or expelled from VTPPF through a process launched by a Jamie’s crony as a “prosecutor,” on charges too general to defend against, with secret complainants and witnesses, etc.
Using her ill-gotten position with VTPPF, Radtke has shamelessly posed and promoted herself as the spokesperson for the entire Virginia Tea Party movement. And even as she is no longer the official leader of VTPPF, having had to step down after announcing her senatorial campaign, Radtke continues to run the organization through her cronies, facilitating membership training, leadership meetings, and so on. She even continues to speak on behalf of the Tea Party Movement, e.g. in her planned appearance on the floor of the Senate before the newly formed Senate Tea Party Caucus.
As Radtke prepared to announce her run for Senate, the lights momentarily went off and the scene was filled with smoke. After the smoke cleared, before everyone’s eyes stood two organizations: VTPPF and, tied with it at the waist, a fundraising PAC, headed by Radtke’s chum and toady Karen Hurd. Doubtless, Jamie is the intended beneficiary of the PAC, even if it will offer, for the smokescreen purposes, some support to other political candidates of Jamie’s and Karen’s choosing.
If you think that the current political leaders in Washington are unethical, wait until Jamie comes to town. Better yet, help stop her before she gets there.
UPDATE: Tea Party organizer Jacob Roginsky admits to being the author of this now well-circulated e-mail in the comments section [3] below.