“I call it ‘Beckaplooza,’ because it seems to be all about Beck,” said Andrew Ian Dodge, the Maine state coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, a coalition of local groups that has helped stage several big rallies, including the seminal Sept. 12, 2009 tea party rally that drew tens of thousands of people to Washington’s National Mall to protest what they saw as unchecked government expansion under President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress…

But when the Patriots were deciding whether to help with Saturday’s rally, Dodge said there was internal queasiness over the M.L.K. link and Beck’s inflammatory rhetoric, including his blasting of Obama as a racist.

“There have been discussions continuously over the last year about whether he is necessarily a force for good or not necessarily,” said Dodge, who is not planning to attend Beck’s rally and expressed concern that it could produce controversy that might haunt the tea party. “Beck takes it outside of the realm of fiscal conservatism into issues that are more emotional and make you wonder if we really want to be associated with this guy.”