Or, more precisely a "Republican-Libertarian-Republican" and a "Libertarian-Republican"

From Eric Dondero:

It gets confusing I know. But follow me here.

I caught this piece by the Huffington Post last week. Now regular columnist Garry Reed of the Dallas Libertarian Examiner has picked up on it. From Dallas Libertarian Examiner:

Libertarians generally take it as a point of unquestioned fact that the Tea Party movement was a grassroots uprising begun at the local level by libertarians and later co-opted by the Republican Party.

But the left-eye-view can't seem to figure out who started or co-opted what from whom or what the difference is between a libertarian, a conservative, and a Republican.

A pair of Huffington Post pundits, Alex Brant-Zawadzki and Dawn Teo, teamed up to produce "a multi-part series, Reading Tea Leaves" which attempts to untangle the Tea Party beginnings and expose its political ambitions for 2010.

Then it gets interesting.

Republican-turned-Libertarian-turned-Libertarian Republican

Continuing:

the pair identifies Eric Odom as "the man most often regarded as the founder of the Tea Parties."

They then tell a tangled tale of how Odom left the Republican Party, joined the Libertarian Party, rejoined the Republican Party, and along the way "effectively hijacked" a Facebook Tea Party group created by the Libertarian Party of Illinois and launched his own Tea Party movement.

The Tea Party, in this version, was founded by a Republican-Libertarian-Republican hijacker.

Okay. Got that? Odom is the official Founder of the Movement, as we've often said here at LR. However, Odom was "on to the outs" with the GOP at the time of the founding, and was a Libertarian Party member. Of course, a mere few months later he switched back to GOP.

Wait a moment. The HuffPo video goes on to rase the spector of "mysterious GOP money" backing Odom at the time of the founding of the Movement. So, even though he may have been a Libertarian Party member at the time, he was secretly backed by Republicans.

Libertarian-turned-Republican financier

And then there's this:

But Alex Brant-Zawadzki, in a follow-up article under his own byline, discovered yet another Tea Party progenitor: David Koch.

"Koch claims to have founded the Tea Party movement," says Brant-Zawadzki, "at an October conference held by Americans for Prosperity."*

Koch, the ninth richest man in America, is indeed sugar daddy to countless conservative and libertarian groups, including libertarian's two iconic organizations, the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation.

So now it's a tie between Republican-turned-Libertarian-turned-Libertarian Republican and always backed by Republicans, and former Libertarian Party Vice-Presidential candidate now Republican benefactor David Koch.

I happen to agree with that assessment. I can remember the very beginnings of the Movement, late 2008; we followed it very closely, and reported on it here at LR. However, I would hasten to add, that there were two other groups involved at the very beginning: A Libertarian Party group in Seattle, and a Ron Paul meet-up group in Denver (or it may be the other way around - an LP group in Denver, and a Ron Paul group in Seattle??)

All sounds oh so complicated. Here's a solution. Why not just say Eric Odom and David Koch are the official Co-Founders of the Tea Party Movement? Forget all the intrigue - Libertarian-turned-Republican, Libertarian backed by Republicans then turned Republican, Libertarian who left the Libertarian Party and then backed Republican groups, ect... ect...

One can simply say, "The Tea Party Movement was Founded by Libertarian Republicans."

Editor's Note - As luck would have it, just last night I attended my local Houston Tea Party Patriots meeting at a tavern near downtown Houston. HTTP meets every other Monday at Sherlock's on West Gray St. 7 pm. You can always catch me there. http://www.teapartypatriots.org