Looks like Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin, the leaders of the Tea Party Patriots, one of the nation’s largest tea party groups, have a book in the works. Rumors have been flying for a while that the duo cashed in on their tea party status to win a lucrative book contract. Now it’s clear the part about the book deal, at least, is true (there’s no word yet on how lucrative it is). Tea Party Patriots: The Rise of Open Source Politics and the Second American Revolution, which is due out in January, promises to be the “definitive history of one of the most radical, revolutionary movements the country has ever seen, from those who started it all.” From the blurb:
In 2009, an unemployed mother of two and a politically inexperienced northern California attorney met on a conference call that would end up starting one of the largest grassroots political organizations in American history, the Tea Party Patriots. Fueled by the fires of passion and patriotism, Mark Meckler and Jenny Beth Martin have become the faces of the most powerful political movement in the country, empowering their more than twenty million members by using both high-tech advances and the time-tested American tradition of rallying in public. Promoting the basic principles of the Tea Party Movement—free market, limited government, and fiscal responsibilty—the Tea Party Patriots have become the largest tea party organization in the world. With unparalleled access to the inner workings of the movement, Meckler and Martin hope to explain how the Tea Party came to be, what it is and is not, and perhaps most important, provide the first comprehensive, forward-looking document outlining a plan to restore America to its prior greatness.
Never before has there been such an audience for this material. Americans of all political stripes have been waiting for a thorough and informative account of this movement. Straight from the co-founders themselves, Tea Party Patriots promises to be the definitive source for a political revolution.
The book’s Amazon listing doesn’t mention whether Meckler will be including a discussion of his years with Herbalife, a company described by government regulators as a pyramid scheme, or mention how he grafted many of Herbalife’s “direct marketing” tactics on to an organization many local tea party activists have disavowed thanks to its litigiousness and secretive operations. We can only hope, though, that the Tea Party Patriots’ rich friends will loan Meckler and Martin another private jet for their book tour so we can post more videos like this one:
