As buzz builds over the upcoming National Tea Party Convention, so has the backlash.
The convention's organizer, the Tea Party Nation, reports word of the convention has hit "the liberal blogosphere," prompting a blast of feedback filled with hate, derision and obscenity.
"We had heard a few days ago that the left was going to hit TPN. Today they did," TPN President Judson Phillips told WND last week. "Wave after wave of liberal joined TPN and began posting inappropriate content."
Phillips said TPN has been forced to take the only action available, banning troublemakers from posting on the organization's website and limiting comment privileges to administrator-approved members.
"We banned over 100 liberals from the site today who came in just to make trouble," Phillips said. "We received a large number of very obscene emails from these people."
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When someone logged onto the TPN message boards and began making comments under the name "Rachel Maddow," it stirred a hornet's nest – both online and at MSNBC, where the real Maddow hosts a talk show.
Phillips told WND that after the suspension of the Maddow account
– which he said was registered to someone with a MSNBC e-mail address – his organization sent an e-mail to its subscribers warning them of the Maddow intrusion and reminding them of the purpose and decorum intended for the message boards.
"If you look at comments on, say, USA Today, and you're a conservative and post on there, they'll flame you and say the nastiest things," Phillips told WND. "But we're conservatives, and we want a place we can discuss issues without liberals screaming 'teabaggers' and disrupting with offensive comments."
Almost immediately, however, the e-mail was picked up by Talking Points Memo, Democratic Underground and left-leaning websites, which ignited a firestorm of new registrants on TPN logging in to condemn and criticize.
Phillips suspects it may have been a set-up, a planned intrusion by the "Maddow" registrant to generate attention. If so, it worked.
Shortly thereafter, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and the real Rachel Maddow teamed up to scoff at TPN, the former accusing TPN of "tea party paranoia."
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