Weeks of ridicule over the teabagging movement’s clueless branding apparently has not yet killed it. In fact, there are now two separate efforts to lay claim to the movement that had a brief start as a grassroots effort before quickly being commandeered by powerful Republicans who astroturfed it into a series of anti-Obama rallies held on April 15. Despite being promoted nonstop on the GOP’s television channel, Fox News, the rallies only attracted about 250,000 people nationwide.

First up is a pair of Republican governors — Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas — who will hold what is being billed as Teabagging 2.0 — er, sorry, Tea Party 2.0 — today. Funny thing is, they are literally phoning it in:

Hoping to recapture the grassroots energy of last month’s “tea parties,” Republican Govs. Mark Sanford of South Carolina and Rick Perry of Texas will host a tele-town hall Thursday that’s being dubbed “Tea Party 2.0.”

The Republican Governors Association said it is expecting 30,000 people to participate in the town hall, which will take place roughly one month after the much-publicized anti-tax tea party rallies held in hundreds of locations across the country on April 15, the tax filing deadline.

Sanford and Perry will each speak for several minutes before opening up the town hall to up to an hour-long question and answer session.

RGA Executive Director Nick Ayers said that while the effort Thursday will be on a smaller scale than the April tea party rallies, it still represents “a great opportunity to mobilize that support.”

Gov. Perry garned nationwide publicity during the April 15 events by suggesting it would be legal — albeit treasonous — if Texas were to decide to secede from the Union again.

Separately, the American Family Association, a group that has raised millions from the poor and uneducated by inflaming anti-gay bigotry, has announced that it is also taking over the teabagging movement, according to D.C.-based writer Ron Moore:

WorldNetDaily is reporting that the American Family Association is now sponsoring Independence Day tea parties in more than 640 U.S. cities in all 50 states.
The paradoxically named Taxed Enough Already, or TEA, parties will be held to protest the Obama middle class tax cuts in front of city halls across the nation.

“Our goal is simply to keep the grassroots organizations mobilized,” said Michael DePrimo, special counsel to AFA President Tim Wildmon. “We don’t want people to think of it as a one-time event and then have it fall by the wayside.”

If facts mattered to the AFA and their ilk, they would have several challenges here. For one thing, teabagging ceased to be a grassroots movement after the GOP lobbyists and Fox News took over. Secondly, as Ron Moore noted, the AFA’s goal of protesting middle-class tax increases is also irrefutably moot. The Obama administration will lower taxes on the middle class. The only tax hikes will target people who earn over $200,000, and that increase will be to a level lower than what they paid under the Reagan administration.

It seems strange that the AFA, a group that has become synonymous with opposition to protecting the civil rights of gay people, would suddenly turn its focus to a protest movement built on the entirely false premise that Pres. Obama will raise taxes on the middle class.

But it may be that the AFA’s professional homophobes have simply seen the writing on the wall. Polling these days consistently shows that younger Americans strongly favor equal rights for gay people — a sentiment that sounds the death knell for anti-gay fundraising.

The teabagging events last month attracted considerable interest from white supremacists. So what’s really going on here is that the AFA, which is based in Mississippi, may be seeking new poor and uneducated donors by aligning itself with the white separatist movement.