From the article:

As the primary season begins, Tea Partiers disagree about where the movement is heading. Rival factions are battling over who will carry the Tea Party banner. Some members worry powerful groups are "astroturfing" what they think should remain a grass-roots group.

"I don't think the Tea Party knows what's happening to the Tea Party," Sacramento party activist Jim Knapp said. "I don't think there's any question the GOP has their tentacles into the Tea Party."

Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, founders of the Tea Party Patriots, say they are proud of what the movement has accomplished, but they are frustrated that other Tea Party groups are being run by Republican political consultants forking over lots of cash for recruitment.

The Tea Party Express, a conservative bus tour that crisscrossed the country last year, was run from inside a Republican political consulting firm.

This week's convention has also been dogged by infighting, with some protesting its $549 entrance fee and its hierarchical organization.

Meckler and Martin are not going to attend. "It wasn't the kind of grass-roots organization that we are, so we declined to participate," Meckler said....

Avlon said the concerns over the proceeds have undercut the event's attempt to be a rallying point.

"They like to compare themselves to the founding fathers. Well, imagine if John Hancock was trying to make a buck off the constitutional convention," he said.

Right now, Avlon said, the Tea Party groups are trying to flex their muscle and move the Republican Party further to the right.

But the unanswered questions are where that takes the Tea Party and how it affects the GOP in the long term.

"If it helps focus the Republican Party on a core message of a return to fiscal conservatism, which it abandoned when it had unified control of Congress ... then I think that can help strengthen the party's commitment to that core unifying issue," Avlon said.

The Tea Partiers should join a real party that has been around since 1971, no shady characters, no for profit conventions (not paid by the taxpayers either like the major party conventions) and the same ideals of limited government. Why settle for immitations when you can join the Libertarian Party? Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery, sure, but it doesn't get you anywhere. While the Tea Party is crumbling before our very eyes, the LP has a structure in all 50 states. They may not get much in the way of electoral success, but make no mistake, they are influential, more than their detractors want to admit.

The Tea Party is not my cup of tea and if you are a limited government type, it shouldn't be your cup of tea either. Join a real party. Accept no substitutes.

Teabaggers. lol

joining an existing third political party,

old

lol!

The people participating in the Tea Party movement have one thing in common. They are fed up with Washington and they way it does business while the people be damned. Any other explanation is pure fabrication by the Obama administration and the state run media. The people that believe these two regimes are in fact misinformed and don't realize it.

I heard the Tea Party movement wasa going to steal the Declaration of Independence and burn it on the internet. Benjamin Gates told Abigail Chase from the National Archives it was a meaningless document and would make a statement

Having something "fracture" while "teabagged" sounds like an ER visit.

What, more than ten people in a group and there are disagreements? How can that be?

Fractures emerge? Did the hotties from Code Pink crash it and get their asses kicked?

"Fractures Emerge"

Those are called compound fractures.
Seek medical help immediately.

The Tea Party movement should steer clear of GOP influence and infiltration.
For the Tea Party movement to infect its self with the GOP is to diminish its self all together.
The Tea Party movement needs to purge it's self of the very parasites its message stands against.
A "For Profit" convention sounds suspiciously GOP to me.Look what that kind of corrupt thinking is doing to the message and the members.