Tea on a Cold Winters Day
Tea party event welcomes Palin – STLtoday.com
Tea party event welcomes Palin
By Kathleen Hennessey
TRIBUNE WASHINGTON BUREAU
02/05/2010As anti-tax and small government enthusiasts began pouring into Nashville Thursday for the National Tea Party Convention, leaders hoped the event would be an important step toward shedding the movement’s chaotic image and establishing it as a national electoral force.
“I know it’s very hard to define the tea party with one message,” said Rebecca Wales, spokeswoman for SmartGirlPolitics.org, an online network popular with tea party activists and a convention sponsor. “But we’re unified in the fact that we do get out. We mobilize quickly and it’s powerful when we do.”
The group also appears united in its support for former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the convention’s keynote speaker. Some will pay more than $300 just to hear Palin speak Saturday night.
Grass-roots activism — the door knocking, phone banking and online networking that was the hallmark of President Barack Obama’s campaign — will be the focus of the weekend convention. Such activity helped elect new Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and tea party leaders increasingly see it as the cornerstone of their power.
The question is, will the Tea Party… become its own party? If this movement, and that is all it is right now, a movement much like a group of bra burning women… if this movement actually forms a political party, it may be something of interest. On the other hand if it, the Tea Party, just stays on as a way for Shawn Hannity to get more face time for his whinny, the sky is falling voice, then it will just be something that will turn more people off of their rights as citizens.
Workshops will be run by the Leadership Institute, a conservative training group recently in the news for funding a magazine founded by James O’Keefe, the activist accused of tampering with phones in the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. Wales’ group will teach attendees how to conduct voter registration drives.
Born last spring as a response to the Wall Street bailouts, the nation’s various tea party groups had until recently been better known for large-scale protests than organization.
True to its early reputation, this weekend’s meeting has been rife with contention. The convention is organized by a for-profit social networking site and charges up to $560 for tickets. Some grass-roots activists criticized the costs as exorbitant and against the spirit of people-powered revolution the movement espouses.
A few sponsors dropped out. The only elected officials signed on to speak — Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. — backed out over ethics concerns.
Kind of scary that the representatives of people are afraid of ethics violations… oh, I forgot, how the curren political structure is, is, if your a Democrat or a Republican, you can’t endorse or encourage any other party or group without sanctions being placed against them. This is a failsafe for political parties to stop it’s members from being honest with the people that wanted them to be honest. I mean lets face it, if a Bill was to go up that helped people but that Bill didn’t help your Political party, your party would make you vote a specific way, either that or you risk sanctions from the party. Americans are really hoodwinked when they think they are voting for someone to speak for them in DC. IF the Tea Party could break this lie of a political party being for the people… but really not, it would be great.
But the big draw, Palin, remains committed. She has promised to donate her more than $100,000 speaker’s fee to “the cause,” though she has not been more specific.
“I thought long and hard about my participation in this weekend’s event,” she wrote this week in an op-ed published by USA Today. “At the end of the day, my decision came down to this: It’s important to keep faith with people who put a little bit of their faith in you. Everyone attending this event is a soldier in the cause.”
Local tea party leaders and their boosters in Washington increasingly are trying to define that cause. Many activists are trying to narrowly define the tea party movement as a push for limited government and fiscal conservatism.
Under that banner, they have united against the health care bill in Congress, and railed against bailouts for banks and the auto industry. Criticism of the deficit and debt is a growing rallying cry.
“There’s a clear economic message that’s evolving out of this movement,” said Republican strategist David Winston. “Which direction, in terms of the political activism, does this go? I think we’ll get a sense of that from this convention.”
