The resounding victory of Indiana State Treasurer Richard Mourdock over six-term Senator Richard Lugar in the Indiana Republican primary resurrected the Tea Party movement as a potent force in much of the public mind. Yet some regarded Mourdock's victory as a re-affirmation of their belief that "Big Money" determines all outcomes, and that the Tea Parties had little to do with it.

In IREHR's analysis of these recent events, by contrast, three factors were relevant: the Tea Parties' unanimous choice to support Mourdock; a decision by the Tea Party to begin campaigning more than twelve months before the election date; and the movement's choice of a ground game rather than an air war significantly impacted the low-turnout election. In short, a year of coordinated efforts between national and local Tea Party groups organizing around a set of Tea Party ideas led to a primary victory and put them back into the center of the national conversation.

After reading an IREHR story on anti-gay activist Scott Lively's scheduled appearance at the April 14 Mass Tea Party Coalition event in Boston, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson has decided to pull out of the event.

Governor Johnson's communications director, Joe Hunter, emailed IREHR this afternoon, "Having seen your article re the upcoming 'Tea Party' event in Boston, I wanted to let you know that Governor Johnson will NOT be attending.  With all due respect to the organizers and their right to invite whomever they wish, he has decided that participating would not be consistent with his strong support for marriage equality and gay rights." 

As further evidence of the growing influence of Christian nationalism inside the Tea Party Patriots, several speakers are scheduled to bring the culture war to center stage at a big Massachusetts Tea Party rally later this month.

Consumed recently by primary politics and internal squabbles, the Tea Party Patriots (TPP) are going back to the beginning. Just when the vicious fight over health care seemed to be in the country's rear-view mirror, Tea Partiers are hoping to jumpstart their movement by returning to the battle they lost two years ago: the fight over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACT)—or what they've derisively labeled "Obamacare."

As the Supreme Court prepares to take up the issue next week, TPP will kick off a week of anti-health care protests in Washington DC with a rally on March 24. The "Road to Repeal" rally is billed as "the first stop on the road to repeal Obamacare," and is the first major event since co-founder Mark Meckler publically broke from the Tea Party Patriots.

Believe it or not, the so-called birthers are back. As if the post Citizens United world of campaign finance wasn't sketchy enough, along comes a new super PAC created specifically to regurgitate racist conspiracy theories claiming President Obama is not a natural-born American, and thereby supposedly barred from holding the presidency.

The group has already started running ads.