A funny thing happened on the way to the recent run-off election; the “Official” Tea Party of Montgomery County, better known as the Texas Patriot PAC (TPPAC) got hijacked and now they’re madder than the notorious wet hen.

The TPPAC was founded to organize, educate, inform citizens regarding public policy, and to support the election of local, state and national candidates who share their core values. Those values include upholding the constitution, free markets, limited government, fiscal responsibility and political action.

So why are they so angry? Seems that not all conservatives agreed with them and decided they would go out and form their own Tea Party which caused the TPPAC to cry foul. The TPPAC did not like the fact the other “faux” Tea Parties were trying to fool the voters (a la Dave Wilson implying he was black to win election to the HCC board of trustees).

Ultimately, only 1 of the 4 local candidates the TPPAC endorsed won the run-off.

They posted on their website:

A bunch of people who have never had anything to do with any tea party activity decided to call themselves a Tea Party about a month ago and put out a “Voter Guide” to fool the people, claiming they were a legitimate Tea Party.

This begs the question of what is a “legitimate” Tea Party since there is no official vetting and no national organization that can recognize or deny a local group to call themselves a Tea Party.

The TPPAC went on to say that:

We knew we would likely be outspent by multiples of our capacity to raise funds and decided to apply our efforts through “sweat equity.” 

Now we all know that money talks and has always bought influence in government. Did anyone really think Ted Cruz won simply because the Tea Party knocked on doors or because he spent more than $16 million with nearly $1 million coming from lawyers and law firms. What is ironic is that, on the one hand, they promote free markets, but then complain when the free market outspends them. It truly is a have your cake and eat it too mentality.

Brian Crumby, a Montgomery County Tea Party volunteer and board member has posted numerous messages on the Conroe Courier website lamenting “the way I read last night’s elections is the majority of voters in the county believe in the tea party’s conservative message, but it got hijacked again.” Or in other words, tea party voters are not as smart as they think they are.

I have always wondered what the people who hang out at polling locations, promoting their candidate hope to accomplish. I think its fine to do research and yes, see what different groups including the Tea Party(s) say about various candidates, but if a person still doesn’t know who they are voting for when heading to the polls, they should probably turn around and go home.

Maybe the TPPAC become too big and powerful, maybe they stepped on some toes and made some conservatives upset. What upsets me is that State Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston won the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor receiving votes from only 3.5 percent of registered Texas voters. In the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, David Alameel of Dallas receiving votes from just 1 percent of the people who can vote in Texas. Sounds like a shadowy mandate to me.