Tea partiers have their knives out over the firing of the executive director of the Republican Study Committee.
“This is personal,” For America chairman and conservative pundit Brent Bozell said according to Time magazine. “They are making it personal by attacking people by personally bersmirching their integrity. I’m just not going to stand for it. Paul Teller is a good man.”
Bozell added that “What’s it’s telling the conservative movement is ‘we don’t want to do business with you.'”
Bozell’s comments come less than a week after Republican Study Committee Chairman Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) announced that Teller had been fired from the committee. Officially, the reason for Teller’s firing had to do with him leaking member-level correspondence between Republican Study Committee members. But his removal was seen by the conservative wing of the party as the latest attack by establishment Republicans on the grassroots.
Like Bozell, Tea Party Patriots President Jenny Beth Martin told Time that Teller’s firing was “clearly a line in the sand.”
“This is clearly a line in the sand that the establishment in Washington D.C. is drawing the conservatives,” Martin said. “With a tax and spend budget, and you combine that with the comments that Speaker [of the House John] Boehner said [last] week and the statement Sen. McConnell has said in recent weeks, it adds up to a pattern of lashing out at the conservative voter base that Republicans actually need to get elected.”
Bozell, Martin and 50 other prominent figures in the conservative movement authored a letter praising Teller as “one of the true heroes.”
Photo from Paul Teller via Facebook.
