Updated February 06, 2010

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Tea Partiers Urge Unity as Rifts Show

By Judson Berger

- FOXNews.com

National Tea Party Convention organizers and many participants have emphasized fiscal responsibility, but others are pulling the movement in a direction that might not be so politically profitable.

Feb. 5, 2010: National Tea Party Convention organizer Judson Phillips addresses questions at a news conference in Nashville.

Tea party leaders called for unity and action on Saturday, the closing day of their national convention, as rifts within the conservative movement continued to show.

Convention organizers and many participants have tried to zero in on fiscal responsibility as their hallmark issue, one they hope has the power to win elections in November. But others -- including theorists who charge that President Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen -- are pulling the grassroots phenomenon in a direction that might not be so politically profitable.

Joseph Farah, founder of WorldNetDaily.com, made questions over Obama's citizenship a centerpiece of his Friday night speech in Nashville and got a standing ovation from the crowd for broaching the controversial topic.

But some convention-goers and speakers on Saturday distanced themselves from the so-called "birther" movement, saying that's hardly a bread-and-butter tea party issue.

"There are much bigger issues out there," said Alice Micca, a tea party activist who flew in from Dallas. "That's just maybe window dressing."

Micca said calls for fiscal responsibility and government transparency are what binds the movement and led her to get involved.

"This is the first time I've ever been involved with anything" political, she told FoxNews.com.

Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart, who gave an electric speech Saturday morning vilifying the "mainstream media," ACORN and the liberal elite, afterward described the "birthers" as a fringe, saying the bulk of the convention participants did not come to discuss Obama's citizenship.

"These people came here because they have a common set of grievances about the government," he said.

Tom Fitton, president of convention sponsor Judicial Watch, said he was asked about Obama's eligibility to serve when he spoke Friday at the convention, but gave his stock response: "We're aware of no credible evidence that Barack Obama is not a citizen."

Fitton acknowledged the interest in the topic in Nashville, but said that's not necessarily representative of where the movement is going.

Since its explosion on tax day last year, the tea party movement has split into hundreds of local organizing groups and several large national groups, including the for-profit Tea Party Nation that organized the convention.

Amy Kremer, an Atlanta tea party organizer who addressed the crowd Saturday, said this has led to "bickering" and "divisiveness" which needs to stop immediately for the movement to be successful.

"We are all in this together," she said. "We've got to stop pointing the guns in the boat and look at the enemies outside the boat."

Going forward, many of the convention speakers and participants point to fiscal responsibility as their weapon of choice in the November elections and are committing the movement to using that issue to push endorsed candidates to victory. They generally don't want to form a third party, preferring to work from within the GOP.

Memphis Tea Party Chairman Mark Skoda outlined five "first principles" that candidates must follow in order to get support from his newly formed Ensuring Liberty Corporation and PAC: fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, less government, states' rights and national security. (Emphasis added)

That list didn't include fighting the threat of Communism, questioning the White House on the whereabouts of the president's birth certificate and leading the charge against what convention kickoff speaker Tom Tancredo called the "cult of multiculturalism" -- even though those topics popped up over the course of the three-day convention.

Speakers like Breitbart said the movement is trying to fight labels like "racist" and "sexist" and would do well to keep focus on opposing big government -- and winning elections. (Emphasis added)

"I think the movement is maturing. ... This is about elections," Skoda said, adding: "We're not a bunch of raging lunatics."

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