I'm sorry to have to do this, but effective immediately, I am shutting down Top Conservatives on Twitter.
TCOT as a group and as a ranking system is the work of two people: Mike Leahy, and myself, and we have agreed from the beginning that it was an equal, 50-50 partnership and would be run as such. Unfortunately, over the past week, Mike has reneged on that agreement.
One week ago today, I sent Mike my thoughts on how TCOT should be run and how we should work together in the near future. This is particularly important, as due to his inability to work in a group decision-making environment, Mike was recently asked to leave the leadership team of Tea Party Patriots, a group that I remain a part of, and I felt it very important to reach clear and mutual agreement on how TCOT should operate. Mike responded that my plan sounded "reasonable", but that he "may have a few tweaks on it". Since then, I have asked him repeatedly to follow through and respond with his "tweaks" so that we could resolve any differences and go forward. He has refused to do so, citing other priorities and demands on his time. I asked one final time for his input yesterday, stressing the importance of the matter, but was again ignored.
At this point, I do not feel comfortable continuing to operate this site with a partner who deliberately refuses to communicate with me on fundamental issues, and it would be inappropriate for me to run it by myself given that our agreement was an equal partnership. I have never received a dime for my work on TCOT; Mike, on the other hand, has a paid contract with PJTV for his show "TCOT on PJTV". I've never asked for a cut of Mike's PJTV profits, but I have asked to simply understand what his agreement is with PJTV for the show that bears our group's name --- a request which Mike has also ignored.
As Mike is unwilling to discuss the operation of TCOT with me, I am shutting down those aspects of TCOT which are under my control, namely the TCOT website (http://topconservativesontwitter.org) and the TCOT feed being supplied to http://tcotreport.com. I am also asking Mike to in turn shut down http://tcotreport.com --- or to relaunch it without using our group TCOT's name --- and stating publicly that as co-founder of TCOT, that site does not have my approval or endorsement.
Mike will surely respond to this action and complain that I simply wasn't patient enough, but I believe a full week is a long time to keep a partner waiting on critical matters. It suggests not so much a lack of time as simple bad faith.
I regret that it has come to this, but here we are. I do not rule out re-activating TCOT should the situation change, but for now: we go dark.
I would be glad to discuss this further with anyone who has questions; I can be reached at . I wish all conservatives on Twitter the very best.
-Rob Neppell
April 30, 2009