Con$ervati$m Inc

According to the New York Times the Tea Party is very upset. I know. Stop the presses, right? They are always yelling at someone to get off their lawns. But this time, they seem to be upset at … themselves. Or more precisely, the modern conservative movement, which rebranded itself as the Tea Party in the wake of George W. Bush’s epic failure of a presidency. For instance, in Nebraska they don’t seem to know whether they’re coming or going:

Mr. Osborn, who has the support of activists in the state, secured a major endorsement last November from FreedomWorks, the organization that helped vault the Tea Party to prominence. Mr. Osborn, the group said, stood “with the grass-roots uprising before it was cool.” But in March, FreedomWorks rescinded its support of Mr. Osborn and backed Mr. Sasse.

Ever since, Nebraska’s Tea Party members have been battling national Tea Party donor groups.

“We are not million-dollar Washington, D.C., special interest groups with strong ties to Capitol Hill. We are simply Nebraskans who are fed up,” a group of 52 activists wrote in an open letter protesting FreedomWorks’ about-face, adding, “We were not consulted, polled, or contacted by these Washington, D.C., groups.”

Evidently, some of the activists on the ground took the notion that the Tea Party was a true bottom up grass-roots movement seriously. (Bless their hearts.) And come to find out there are a whole bunch of big D.C.-based professionals who don’t care much what they think about anything. Turns out the town hall-crashing, tricorn hat-wearing, Gadsden flag-waving patriots were just a convenient means to an end.