The Tea Bag movement has proven to be a disaster for the already badly damaged Republican Party. The Republican Party couldn't resist the temptation to associate itself with this movement, and indeed tried to co-opt it as its own. The Republican Party is so desperate to recapture some of the excitement it used to generate for its base, that it uncritically threw its arms around the Tea Bag movement without stopping to consider who some of these people were: militia, secessionists, mentally unbalanced, and even--it seems--potentially violent.
Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents who identified him as the Twitter user CitizenQuasar. In a series of tweets beginning April 11, CitizenQuasar vowed to start a "war" against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city's version of the national "Tea Party" protests promoted by the conservative-leaning Fox News.