After emerging out of nowhere over the summer as a seemingly potent and growing political force, the tea party movement has become so rife with internal feuding over philosophy, strategy and money that some supporters fear it will disintegrate before realizing its full potential ... Disagreements over those issues have spawned personal and institutional rivalries, at least one highly contentious lawsuit and -- perhaps most significantly -- resulted in the splintering of local, regional and national groups into a patchwork of hundreds of smaller groups that occasionally seem to be working at cross-purposes.