Tea Party Drops Orly Taitz From Speaking Engagement

She's "not what the Tea Party is about at this point"

Orly Taitz, an Orange County dentist and leading voice in the far-right "birther" movement, had a speaking invitation from the Tea Party rescinded this week. Taitz was scheduled to address an April 15 Tea Party gathering in California, but organizers of the event balked at the last minute, saying that Taitz's decidedly non-mainstream views are "not what the Tea Party is about at this point." A number of Republican Senate hopefuls scheduled to speak at the rally have also been quick to distance themselves from Taitz, which observers on both the left and right regard as a politically shrewd move.

• 'Credit Where It's Due,' admits lefty blogger Michael Roston at True/Slant. "If you can’t rely on the Tea Partiers to dismiss the racist animus behind birtherism, at least you should credit Republican candidates like [Carly] Fiorina, [Chuck] DeVore, and John Dennis for doing so," he explains. "They are shining examples for how Republicans should address the racist mania that drives Taitz and her ilk."

• Good for the Tea Party, concludes Brad Porter at The Crossed Pond, a conservative roundtable blog. Porter sees the Taitz blackballing as evidence of a good-faith effort among Tea Partiers to "disown the fringe elements" of the movement. For further proof, he points to a recent pledge from the libertarian group FreedomWorks to oust anyone who shows up at a Tea Party rally with "a racist sign or an offensive sign." (Porter doesn't note that the motive behind FreedomWorks' plan seems to be to weed out liberals trying to discredit the Tea Party movement by acting boorishly at rallies, rather than an actual desire to confront offensiveness.)

• But Why Didn't These Denouncements Come Sooner? wonders blogger GottaLaff at the irreverent news roundup The Political Carnival. "Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina said they hadn't realized Mental Taitz was scheduled to speak. That's funny, she was listed as a featured guest on the Pleasanton Tea Party website... yesterday. All they had to do was pop over and take a peek."