More on the Tea Party Crasher

(Chuck Muth) – L.A. Times blogger Ashley Powers conducted an interview with tea party poseur Scott Ashjian, presently a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Nevada pending a lawsuit challenging his candidacy (first hearing scheduled for April 14th). Some of Ashjian’s quotes to note:

“A tea party can consist of one person.”

Really?

Um, folks….if you’re having tea parties by yourself, you might want to seek some professional help. This comment by Ashjian reminded me of Eric Cartman’s backyard tea parties with his stuffed bear Peter Panda and his Polly Prissy-Pants doll on “South Park.”

“I think (Sue Lowden is) pandering to Tea Party activists who don’t want anything to do with her, according to what they tell me. Their choice is not Sue Lowden.”

For some, that’s probably true. But you haven’t seen every known and legitimate leader of the various Nevada tea party groups signing a letter denouncing Sue Lowden the way they did to Scott Ashjian a couple weeks ago. Nor have they produced a TV commercial calling Sue Lowden a fake and telling her to “get lost” the way they’ve done for Scott Ashjian.

“I think Danny Tarkanian is a crybaby…”

OK, even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

Mr. Ashjian also appeared on Jon Ralston’s “Face to Face” program last night. Some more tidbits:

“There is a leader in Nevada of the tea party and it’s me. The tea party in Nevada leader is me.”

Yep. This guy definitely is full of himself, in addition to being full of something else. His self-serving and self-declared leadership pronouncement reminds me of something Margaret Thatcher once said: “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”

Scott Ashjian can claim he’s the leader of the tea party movement in Nevada ‘til the cows come home, but that doesn’t make it so. He’s the leader of a tea party faction that consists of….one person. Himself.

On the claim that Ashjian isn’t a tea partier because no one who is active in the real tea party movement in Nevada has ever seen him at a tea party rally, Ashjian claimed he attended the tea party rally at Sunset Park last April 15th. Hey, he even says he has a picture of himself at that rally which he supplied to the L.A. Times!

OK, on this one….I have some personal insight.

That April 15th rally was actually organized by a young woman named Susan Crawford. Crawford was working for the Clark County GOP at the time, but was volunteering to put together the Sunset Park tea party rally. Then she ran into some government bureaucracy roadblocks and asked for my help.

Although very supportive of the tea party rallies and movement, I can’t say I’m a tea party activist. However, I did lend my organization’s name to the rally at Sunset Park in order to get the required government permit. I also paid for the required liability insurance, as well as hire the required security guards for the event.

In addition, I helped confirm getting Atlanta talk-show host Herman Cain to give a keynote address at the rally, as well as line up a half-dozen other speakers. And finally, I was able to persuade KXNT 840 AM to participate in the rally and provide us their sound truck and staging.

At no time was Scott Ashjian ever involved in ANY aspect of the planning and execution of this rally. None. Nada. Bupkis.

Simply being one of the thousands who showed up for the rally doesn’t make him any more a leader of the tea party movement in Nevada than claiming to be a four-star general because you once went to an Army/Navy football game.

I wouldn’t have the cojones to call myself a tea party activist, let alone a tea party leader, let alone THE tea party leader in Nevada for the few things I did for that one rally. Yet I did a hell of a lot more than Scott Ashjian ever dreamed of. But that hasn’t stopped Ashjian from pronouncing himself King of the Tea Party.

“I waited for somebody to step up and take the lead and nobody did. Everybody talked; nobody did anything. So I decided to take charge.”

What a jackass.

Does Scott Ashjian think that tea party rally he claims to have attended last April 15th just happened on its own? Spontaneous political combustion?

And while I’ve had a few disagreements with the direction and activities of some of the Nevada tea party leaders over the past year, it is undeniable that they have been meeting, training, organizing, and rallying all this time – and the leaders who have been coordinating those activities are well known in the tea party movement in Nevada.

Unlike Scott Ashjian.

It really takes an awfully big set of brass ones for this shyster to claim that “nobody did anything” over the past year when they’ve been doing PLENTY while HE sat on his keister up in the peanut gallery picking his nose. And now that he’s run to the front of the parade that others have organized we’re all supposed to be grateful and bow down to his “leadership”?

I….don’t….think….so.

And finally, in response to the fact that none of the real and legitimate tea party activists or leaders will allow him speak at the big tea party rally in Searchlight this weekend, or any other grassroots event, Ashjian told the Reno Gazette-Journal today, “They’re cowards and sheep.”

And he’s a jerk.

In the immortal words of the Tea Party Express: “Get lost, Scott.”