Soon, very soon…..there will be a National Tea Party Convention…the first ever…and it is NOT without problems….
A spat between organizers of the National Tea Party Convention, which starts Thursday in Nashville and will feature Sarah Palin
as its keynote speaker, has largely centered on fees, speakers and profits.
Supporters of the convention to be held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center say the national conference will build alliances across state lines, strengthening into a force that can press the Democratic and Republican parties to change their ways or face a threat to their existence.
The convention’s opponents, however, believe the event threatens to ruin the movement. They say their disjointed, grass-roots uprising is being turned into a top-down organization that will be co-opted by the major parties.
Marcus Pohlmann, a professor of political science at Rhodes College in Memphis, says supporters see the convention as a means to build alliances between local conservative activists that could strengthen the movement into a national political force which could force the Republican and Democratic parties to alter their policies, The (Nashville) Tennessean reported Sunday.
The rift is starting and it could tear the movement apart……the Paulites are pissed at the Freedom Works groups for turning the movement into a circus, at best….
The Tea Party folks are trying to turn a profit…a doubtful occurrence……the main idea was to try and influence the direction of the two parties….but then there are those within the movement that ant to replace the two parties with an ultra-conservative party….The Tea Party….
AP writer Beth Fouhy wrote in an article recently:
Relying on Internet tools like Facebook and Twitter for communications, tea partiers have organized meetings, marches and protests almost overnight, often catching establishment politicians off guard. They’ve put together a Capitol Hill rally hours before President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech Wednesday to protest his health care plan.
Tea partiers boast that they are a leaderless, grass-roots political army not beholden to either party, even though some of them acknowledge that Republican candidates who share their conservative fiscal views are most likely to benefit from the movement’s efforts.
About 50 activists from 30 states gathered in Washington over the weekend for a conference that former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, helped put together. Armey, a lobbyist until late last year, has made it clear he doesn’t want to be the face of the movement.
Tea parties began cropping up around the country last February, responding with anger to the government’s bailout of banks and insurance giant AIG, then Chrysler and General Motors. They then took on defeating Obama’s health care overhaul, showing up at and often disrupting lawmakers’ town hall meetings in August.
Democrats and some Republicans dismissed them as “Astroturf,” or fake grass roots, loud but ineffective. Few in either party now doubt the tea partiers’ legitimacy. And woe to Democrats and Republicans alike who don’t recognize their power.
The whole Tea Party movement will be very interesting to watch over the coming months…..will it devour itself? Or will it survive to become a major mover in the American political scene? As a student of political theory, I will be watching these people closely…I believe there is a helluva story in this movement…..
Note: After writing this I found an article in Politico written by Jonathan Martin that sheds a bit of light on this subject:
The widely anticipated civil war within the Republican Party is off to a decidedly dull start.
Defying predictions from last year, early evidence suggests that party leaders and even most grass-roots activists are more interested in winning elections than in ideological bloodletting.
A spate of recent developments points to two conclusions about the modern Republican Party that were in doubt as recently as a few months ago.
The first is that for all the talk about tea party insurgents and fulminating radio and cable commentators taking over, the GOP remains above all an establishment party.
GOP leaders easily swatted down a proposed “purity test” for candidates at last week’s Republican National Committee meeting — an indication that party officials are no more willing to turn over the keys to right-wing activists now than they were during the Bush years.