JUNEAU, Alaska — A Tea Party Express coordinator said Monday that the group’s expulsion from a national coalition over a member’s blog posting about the NAACP was “arrogant and preposterous.”
Tea Party Express was expelled from the National Tea Party Federation, a coalition of grassroots political groups, for refusing to publicly rebuke and oust spokesman Mark Williams. Williams had posted a blog that satirized the NAACP and referred to its president, Benjamin Jealous, as “Tom’s nephew and NAACP head colored person.”
The NAACP approved a resolution last week that called on activists and others to “repudiate the racist element and activities” within the Tea Party movement.
Tea Party Express coordinator Joe Wierzbicki contended the federation had “enabled and empowered the NAACP’s racist attacks on the Tea Party movement, and they should be ashamed of themselves.”
“Circular firing squads of groups within the Tea Party movement attacking one another accomplish nothing, and on this issue the Tea Party Federation is wrong,” he said in a statement.
Christina Botteri, a founding member of the federation, said it was “interested in moving the whole Mark Williams thing behind us,” to focus on fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets.
Tea Party Express chairwoman Amy Kremer said Tea Party Express does not condone racism of any kind.
