[livius]

What I don’t understand is why.

It’s true that perhaps the Tea Party groups would have been more effective if the IRS hadn’t intervened, so we have to bear that in mind. But from what I have seen of “Tea Party” groups, they’re fractious, they don’t get along with each other, they tend to splinter internally over various issues of conservative purity, and they never really back a serious candidate.

So what was Obama so afraid of?

In my opinion, it was that one big gathering in DC a few years ago. Most of the people there really weren’t members of any group, Tea Party or no, but had found out about it from miscellaneous groups, blogs, mailings, etc., some of which may have used the title “Tea Party.” I think Obama and the Dems were much more scared by that than they wished to admit, and this is the reason for the targeting of the dysfunctional, circular firing squad Tea Party groups who represented no threat and surely would have killed each other off in any case.

[originalbuckeye]

They need a Boogie Man. They talk of the Tea Party like it is an expansive, massively funded behemoth. And their minions believe it. Remember when the Gov of Connecticut (or was it another blue state?) went to California to fund raise and he was criticized for it? He said ‘well we have to counter the millions that the Tea Party raises’. yeah, right. AS IF the Tea party had millions to use for negative campaigning. AS IF the Tea Party is ONE GROUP across the country.

[RobbyS]

The Tea Party is a movement, like the civil rights movement, not a national party. Remember the blacks were divided, too.