Website to track tea party

NAACP leaders have a message for the members of the tea party movement: We're watching you.

The civil rights group has partnered with three liberal media websites to form a "tea party tracker" intent on monitoring "racism and other forms of extremism" within the tea party movement.

The online project, developed and branded by the NAACP's new media staff, already has drawn strong criticism from tea party supporters, who have said repeatedly that racism plays no role in their movement.

Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, said the project was started because NAACP leaders kept hearing from its members that they were seeing racist signs, T-shirts and commentary coming from the tea party movement.

Covering the politics of the Lowcountry, South Carolina and the nation.

"The site is set up to be utilized as a tool to track activities as they come up," Shelton said. "It is in some ways consistent with the kind of tracking that has been done of other extremist entities. I do not want to suggest that the tea party is a hate group, but there are some disturbing elements within."

The conservative website Daily Caller first reported the story about the site, which features a blog, breaking news section and the tagline "a watched pot never boils."

Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for Freedomworks, which supports many tea party groups, called the ongoing conversation about racism and the tea party frustrating.

Steinhauser said liberal groups don't hold themselves to as strict a standard. For example, he said, at anti-war rallies during the Bush administration there were signs showing communist decals and supporting communist leaders Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il.

"There's such a different standard we're held to," Steinhauser said. "Both sides have to self-police. We should all hold ourselves accountable."