St. Louis Tea Party Outs Steve Tilley as Secret Black Separatist

Black Separatist Steve Tilley, as imagined by the St. Louis Tea Party

Two years after they first came together, the St. Louis Tea Party has decided to focus at least a fraction of their energies on what they deem to be insufficiently conservative Republicans who live inside Missouri's borders.  For all of the hullabaloo and attention given to the tea partiers in St. Louis, they've been virtually indistinguishable from the Ed Martin political organization and GOP establishment in Missouri.  To date, anyway.  

Now, they're taking on Speaker Steve Tilley (R-Perryville) for supporting local control legislation pertaining to the St. Louis Police Department. On Twitter and the bloggernets, leaders call Tilley an "establishment politician" and call the House-passed local control legislation "irresponsible." Nothing too crazy there; reasonable people obviously disagree about the local control issue. 

But Tilley is also accused of 'astrotufing' because he's tried to recruit area Young Republicans to help him at Lincoln Days.  Last night, followers of the official @StLTeaParty twitter feed were sent to a blog post discussing "Tilley's recent association with the New Black Panther Party." The evidence for this bold claim is that Rep. Jamilah Nasheed (D-St. Louis) was photographed at some point next to a black man wearing a beret. The Post-Dispatch takes note of the accusation today, which Tilley calls "race-baiting at a level that I haven't seen since I've been here."

I'm not accused of standing up for Steve Tilley very often, but...huh?  

Here's a sampling of the official organization messages about Tilley: 

How dumb is this accusation that Tilley is secretly aligned with a militant anti-Semitic black separatist hate group?  There's no doubt that Tilley is an establishment politician, but that's hardly slowed the St. Louis Tea Party from supporting Martin, Peter Kinder, Roy Blunt or most every other Milk Toast Republican on the ballot in Missouri.

Too weird for words.

Nice work propping up the St. Louis Tea Party, Missouri Republicans.