The proposed mosque is becoming a divisive issue between Republicans and tea party conservatives. Mosque debate strains tea party, GOP

The debate over the proposed mosque near ground zero, which has tied Democrats in knots, turns out to be just as tricky for their adversaries on the right — particularly those in the tea party.

Within the loose coalition of local and national conservative activist groups that form the tea party movement, a quiet tug of war is being waged between those who want to embrace the hard-line opposition that has emerged as the Republican Party line and those who have urged their fellow tea partiers to refrain from rallying opposition because it’s inconsistent with the movement’s focus on economic and constitutional issues.


While the debate is taking place within the confines of the movement, it nevertheless reflects a larger sense of unease on the right with an issue that is dividing both Republicans and tea party conservatives over tensions between core principles such as balancing religious freedom and property rights and the raw feelings evoked by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a rising GOP star, warned Monday against "overreacting" to the threat of terror and painting "all of Islam" with the brush of terrorism.

Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, expressed similar apprehensions Monday.

“A president not only serves Muslim citizens, not only commands Muslims in the American military, but also leads a coalition that includes Iraqi and Afghan Muslims who risk death each day fighting Islamic radicalism at our side,” he wrote in The Washington Post. “How could he possibly tell them that their place of worship inherently symbolizes the triumph of terror?

Nowhere is the conflict more obvious than among tea party activists, who have sought to distinguish themselves from a Republican Party they say has strayed from its adherence to the principles of individual liberties and limited government. For tea partiers, the mosque dilemma also is representative of a larger philosophical battle that has raged within their movement almost from its inception last year in protest of what activists saw as the unchecked government expansion being pushed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats. While some of the tea party’s earliest organizers have struggled to keep the movement tightly focused on fiscal and constitutional restraint, other activists and conservative interests have tried to direct the tea party’s energy toward national security or social causes including supporting Israel or opposing illegal immigration, abortion and same-sex marriage.

That delicate balance between its narrow fiscal focus and a more generic form of conservatism is now being tested in Congress by the white-hot fight over plans to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque in lower Manhattan only blocks from where the World Trade Center stood.

While most tea party groups — including those in New York — have officially sat on the sidelines, some of the earliest or most strident opposition nationally has been provided by tea party hero Sarah Palin, as well as tea-party-backed Senate candidates Sharron Angle of Nevada and Gary Berntsen of New York.

Other prominent tea partiers admit struggling to rectify a personal aversion to the mosque plans with the tea party’s embrace of state sovereignty, property rights and constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, while some have tried to walk the thin line between the two stances.

On Monday, a spokesman for the Kentucky Senate campaign of Rand Paul, a tea party standard bearer, issued a statement seeming to beg off the issue by invoking states’ rights. “We don't want New York intervening in our local Kentucky issues,” read the statement from Gary Howard to a Kentucky political blog, “and we don't look to interfere with New York's local issues.”

But asked to clarify Paul’s stance, Howard on Tuesday sent POLITICO a statement emphasizing Paul’s personal opposition.

“While this is a local matter that should be decided by the people of New York, Dr. Paul does not support a mosque being built two blocks from ground zero,” Howard said in the statement. “In Dr. Paul's opinion, the Muslim community would better serve the healing process by making a donation to the memorial fund for the victims of Sept. 11.”

In June, the prominent political action committee Tea Party Express quietly began to distance itself from flame-throwing, anti-mosque radio host Mark Williams, replacing him as chairman partly because of his high-profile opposition to the mosque. (He left the group entirely last month after his racially incendiary attack on the NAACP, which had recently passed a resolution expressing concern over racist elements in the tea party.)

Williams said opposing the mosque “is one of the projects that I told the Tea Party Express that I wanted to focus on, and it’s not the focus of the Tea Party Express.” He called the mosque “a monument to a great victory for Islamic terror” and asserted tea party groups have frustrated some of their members by remaining mum on the issue, attributing their reluctance to “political correctness. Or maybe they believe it’s a fait accompli. Maybe it’s not a hill worth dying on for them. It could be any number of reasons.”

Judy Pepenella, a prominent New York tea party leader, has emerged as a leading mosque opponent, but she stressed that her Long Island-based tea party group, Conservative Society for Action, hasn’t taken an official position opposing it.

“It’s something we were discussing before you even called,” she said. “When you’re touching on faith it gets to be a very, very difficult question,” she added, stressing that her opposition is based exclusively on the mosque’s location and not more general religious objections.

Pepenella and Williams asserted that opposing the mosque is not inconsistent with the tea party’s emphasis on constitutional and property rights, with Williams explaining, “Tea partiers are fierce constitutionalists, and they know that constitutional rights do not constitute license, that they frequently come into conflict.”

The Louisiana-based Conservative Party USA, which has a plank in its platform opposing the planned mosque, recently elected Williams its president, he said, asserting it was attracting tea partiers looking for an outlet for anti-mosque activism. “I’m not telling tea partiers who aren’t already outraged over this to leave the tea party over this, but those who are inclined to do so, there are outlets out there to oppose this horrid temple to savagery.”

In fact, Liberty Central, a tea-party-related group founded by Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is circulating a petition opposing the mosque, and Ginni Thomas has expressed support for an anti-mosque rally near ground zero on Sept. 11.

Liberty Central’s policy director, Sarah Field, said the petition has generated a strong response among tea party activists. She stressed, though, that the group “stands behind limited, constitutional government and respects freedom of worship, assembly and private property rights” and isn’t “proposing that the government intervene and stop the mosque's construction” but, rather, “leveraging citizen voices to place public pressure on the individuals and groups behind the mosque, so that they understand the extent of their insult and are pressured to stop their plans.”

Despite the absence of most tea party groups from the debate, allegations have swirled that the movement is somehow driving the increasing GOP opposition.

Over the weekend, Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, asserted that the GOP felt free to demagogue Islam because the tea party was “liberating the inner bigot in people."

But, in interviews, a number of leading activists told POLITICO there hasn’t been much discussion on tea party listervs and conference calls about the mosque. Most said flatly they don’t consider the mosque a tea party issue, though several said they recognized the right of the mosque planners to build it, yet personally disagreed with New York City’s decision to permit it.

And while activists often have political interests outside the tea party’s core mission, there is a movementwide understanding that if activists want to take on such issues, they should try not to drag the tea party brand into it, according to Andrew Ian Dodge, who serves as the Maine state coordinator for the influential Tea Party Patriots umbrella group.

“We don’t tell people what they should say and shouldn’t say, but if it’s not a tea party issue, we prefer — I think would be a polite way to put it — that they don’t do it under a tea party banner,” said Dodge. “So I don’t think you’re going to be seeing tea party rallies against the mosque. Most tea-party-minded people I talk to say it’s in bad taste, but it doesn’t fall under our remit. And if it did, we would look at the states’ rights and property rights and say, ‘OK, they can do whatever they want,’” he said. “We’re very wary about taking up any of these emotional issues, because it dilutes our main focus — which is fiscal, fiscal, fiscal — and we have got the gig down so most tea party people don’t want to be dragged off on tangents.”

For other tea party organizers, it’s been tough to decipher a “tea party stance” on the mosque.

“I am torn,” conceded Mark Lloyd, chairman of the Lynchburg, Va., Tea Party and an advisory board member of the National Tea Party Federation, a messaging coalition that expelled Williams after his NAACP attack. “I personally want to see the tea party stay focused on constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility and personal liberties,” he said, but he wondered out loud about the line between legal property rights and religious freedoms and morality.

“Not everything we are concerned with as individuals can be put into a category,” he said. “This issue seems to transcend any specific group affiliation.”

Amy Kremer, who replaced Williams as Tea Party Express chairwoman, said her group “is focused on the economic issues facing America, such as the growing national debt, irresponsible deficit caused by excess spending and the growing intrusiveness of the federal government.” But, she added, “it is clear from our travels across America that tea party members believe it is wrong to put a mosque anywhere near ground zero.”

Clarification: An earlier version of this story indicated that Ginni Thomas planned to speak at an anti-mosque rally on Sept. 11. That information was based on a press release from organizers, who clarified on Wednesday that Thomas will not speak at the rally.

