Tea Party head warns GOP of Fla. repeat

A founder of the Tea Party movement said Wednesday he had a warning for Republican leaders: Back conservative candidates or else other states will suffer the same backlash that toppled Florida’s Republican Party chairman this week.

“We are turning our guns on anyone who doesn’t support constitutional conservative candidates,” said Dale Robertson, who operates TeaParty.org out of Houston and helped start the movement nearly two years ago.

He declined to say which states are next on the Tea Party’s hit list. He said party leaders in those states would be warned privately, but the movement’s wrath “will be very clear publicly” if they don’t listen.

“If they continue to do things like they did in Florida, it’s not going to be good for them,” Mr. Robertson said. “If they don’t get that and their party chairmen don’t get that, they are going to be ostracized.”

In Florida, a struggle between conservative activists and the Republican Party establishment forced state GOP Chairman Jim Greer to quit Tuesday. He blamed his decision on activists who he said “turned their guns on fellow Republicans instead of focusing our efforts on defeating Democrats.”

Mr. Greer had been under fire for backing Gov. Charlie Crist, considered a moderate in the party who last year praised President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan, in the race for the Republican nomination for Senate over former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, who is supported by the Tea Party movement.

The chairman’s resignation headed off a party meeting Saturday where he expected to face fierce opposition from conservative activists.

Mr. Robertson planned to deliver the warning in a phone call Wednesday to National Republican Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele, who a day earlier said he supported the Tea Party activists and that he didn’t think their movement had caused a schism in the Republican Party.

Democrats say the tension between the Tea Party and mainstream Republicans is a “civil war” that will undermine Republicans’ hopes for significant gains in the mid-term elections in November.