By Mande Wilkes || The emerging Tea Party – which bills itself as the nation’s answer to bipartisan fiscal irresponsibility – is spending itself into turmoil.
It’s the coming-out convention itself that’s threatening to upend the Party. Just days before the convention, Tea Party organizers and activists are withdrawing support amid charges of outrageous spending on the event.
From the New York Times:
A Tea Party convention billed as the coming together of the grass-roots groups that began sprouting up around the country a year ago is unraveling as sponsors and participants pull out to protest its expense and express concerns about “profiteering.”
So is the Tea Party set to be just another party that undermines its own platform even as it holds it up as gospel? The only – only – thing the Tea Party’s got going for it is its declared commitment to fiscal restraint. Populism is its central tenet, and yet, at almost $600 per ticket, the average American is excluded from the convention.
So-named for its pledge to reacquaint the country with its roots, already the Tea Party organizers have lost touch with those very ideals. Rather than distinguishing itself from the two major parties, the Tea Party is blending right in.
A rose by any other name …
By PasserBy January 27, 2010 at 10:49 am
Mande:
It is a shame if this implodes of it’s own weight, even before it gets off the ground. However, I’m sure both parties (especially the Repubs) will be happy about it. I still believe that both major parties agree they don’t want a viable third party (it’d divvy up the pie too much), and I still think that; so even the Dems don’t mind if the tea party goes up in flames.
By the way, still enjoy reading your stuff…keep ‘em coming.
By Reality Check January 27, 2010 at 11:20 am
I understand how someone on the outside would believe that this so-called “Convention” is a legitimate gathering of Tea Party activist and organizers. However, this is absolutley a for-profit event that is at a far reach from the real people behind the movement. It’s events like this one that make uninformed people believe that the Tea Party is just becoming another money-hungry entity. It is not true and this event is not endoresed by a majority of the silent leaders of the movement.
Basically, some folks saw an opportunity to use the “Tea Party” brand and are taking advantage of it. Not only would the average American not be able to attend this event, the typical Tea Party member would chose not to. The price tag attached to this convention is everything we stand against.
Let me assure you, we have a 50 state strategy that will affect the races around the country. We are not dead on arrival, we are just beginning. If you don’t believe it, wait until April 15th for the Tax Day Rally – a day when Americans will come together (free of charge) and protest the outrageous spending of our government. It’s not about leadership, conventions or having Sarah Palin speak on our behalf – it’s about remembering the Constitution and valuing the principles that made our country great to begin with.
By Cooter Brown January 27, 2010 at 11:23 am
Thare iz no tea partie politickal partie. Neva haz bin– neva will bee. Th’ veriw idea iz contra th’ movement witch iz fundamentally loose, spontaneous, an’ reactshunary.
By Andrew January 27, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Tea Party is the 2010 incarnation of the Ross Perot movement in ’92.
By Liberty For Me January 27, 2010 at 1:33 pm
The teaparty is people who can support a couple of focused ideals…Constitutional Government and Fiscally responsible government.
The divide will come when people are forced to deal with immigration and the military policy…Republicans have been so brainwashed with abortion,illegal immigration and the so called terror war that they really cant handle the actual restraints of the constitution once we go back to inforcing the true limits of government.
So it will be fractionalized into Neocons and Libertarians….People who support Ron Paul and the true reigns of government and the facade of liberty with the Sarah Palin crowd.
Not sure how it will pan out in the next election,but it will be very interesting
By dirtbogger January 27, 2010 at 1:37 pm
One problem is that establishment politicians are tring to become the mouth peice of the movement by bringing their big money backing and political influence. If they have their way about it, it would only be a name change for the Republican Party, Kind of like when Puff Daddy changed his name to P-Diddy because thats what his friends called him. Same shitty music, and same shitty entertainer just a new name! This movement was started by the comman people. If we want it to succeed we need to linch the elete class the hell out! A good read for any one would be ” A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zin”, he paints a very good picture of how the elete have minipulated everyone keeping them devided so they can maintain their power over us wage slaves.
By No Name January 27, 2010 at 2:27 pm
First of all there is no defined Tea Party movement…..not yet anyway and that is just as it should be.
SC does not track just how much the labeled radical left has now swung to agreement with what many say is the core of the Tea Party movement…the Ron Paul Libertarian wing of a sometimes GOP voting block.
So you could say that there is a Right Tea Party and a Left Tea Party…the most important point in this “movements’ growth is that these two wings have both come about and together on the same issues.
Both wings agree that the established political parties are now centrally controlled by a common theme……take\steal tax payer money or Federal Reserve created fiat money and spend it for the profit of and with the special interests that fund the election of either or both of these mafias.
I beleive that Ross Perot has advised Congressman Paul that he inadvertnently stopped any chance of Paul or anyone else forming a third party…. after he….Perot ….funded and then scared the entrenched interests of the two parties…… when Perot ran for and got a significant amount of the vote for President.
Both mafia parties on the National and State level then spent all the time since the Perot scare….. making sure that every possible road block and legislation be erected and as much money spent…. to keep anything like an alternative party from being formed in the U.S.
The great theft and scam that is the Federal city DC does not work as well if you have too many different hands to feed.
The Tea Party should adopt simple ideas that will destroy the two party graft mafia that is killing our country.
1. Term limits on all positions.
2. Legacy limits…if your direct relative held the office… a relative can not hold that office for 25 years.
3. Simple Flat tax….without an ability to use Tax legislation for competitive corporate advantage you eliminate the entire lobbyist food chain scourge.
4. Pull all U.S. troops out of foreign military positions or campaigns
unless constitutionally re-authorized annually by Congress.
5. Explain by Executive proclamation to the world and the United Nations that any country engaging in provable particpation in attacking our country will be attacked under Rules of Engagement that will actively and without remorse… kill any citizen of that country.
Let the world know that much like in Roman times…you kill an American and we will kill you or any countryman that might be standing near you.
6. Conversely… World, the people of the United States will no longer engage in the export of the vested elitist product of our State Department
….that is Democracy or Christianity.
Instead we will use all our resources and funds to help our own citizens.
7. We will erect fences and controlls to manage the entrance of any person into the United States territory.
8. Eliminate The Federal Reserve and return monetary policy back to the people because it is difficult to argue that even the dumbest of citizen legislators could do any worse than what has passed for the policies of the last 25 years.
That is a start…but the Mafia is convinced….less so after Brown…that we will all blink and go back to sleep.
Harder to go to sleep when you are hungry.
PS: The moment Sarah campaigns for McCain…. is the moment she is irrelevant.
I understand why she feels she must….and I wanted to be on the call when the same McCain campaign bastards that were cooking her goose here a month ago had to ask for her air cover in Arizona.
McCain is proudly and vocally a moderate……..John do you really think you are the only Arizonan who can do that job.
It is Arizona’s seat not yours…….step down and become the Sec Def since Lindsey does not seem willing.
By Preston January 27, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Tea Party – noun.
a grassroots movement that harbored libertarian influences but was later gobbled up by the Republican establishment
By Rick January 27, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Speak it cooter….
By spinnikerca January 27, 2010 at 6:47 pm
You are assuming that those who are putting on the tea party convention to get email addresses and label themselves the ‘leaders’ actually have the tea partiers following them.
What if they are just a small splinter group with a drive to be organized and to ‘lead’ that the rest don’t feel?
By Elmer January 27, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Preston has it right. The Tea Party has already been hijacked by the Repubs.I think Sarah Palin, brainless cheerleader for the neocons, was supposed to show up and speak(read from the teleprompter)
By PainfullyAware January 27, 2010 at 10:26 pm
The “Tea Party” began with the Ron Paul supporters in 2008. “TEA Party” is the original form and represented “TEA => Taxed Enough Already”.
Since the March On Washington DC, by one to two MILLION people, => the power brokers took notice, but down played the EVENT.
The Establishment is attempting to Co-Opt the movement by the usual tactics.
Be careful what you take as the “Movement”. We do not have to agree on everything; but we all agree => a REDUCTION OF GOVERNMENT involvement beyond its constitutional limits, must happen.
Those who cling to “Labels”, rather than “Actions”, are easily deceived.
By T4 January 28, 2010 at 1:08 pm
The “Tea Party” movement is a complete farce! Thank you, Mande.
By Lovenguth January 28, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Pasen la Voz
The TEA political Party is quite alive in America
The only state which has an official registered TEA political party is Florida. The American citizens of Florida will then have the opportunity to show the seriousness of their commitment. The current professional politicians of the Republican and Democrat party have destroyed the St. Johns River and Florida waterways; big oil gets the Gulf of Mexico.
On November 2, 2010, the date of the Florida 2010 Election, Florida citizens from whatever party they are registered to vote will be an indication of how the TEA movement is doing. Thousands of active duty and military veterans from every service have remained quiet, and are quite tired of both the Republican and Democrat corporation financed elections. The 30 second commercials do not fool them.
Thus far the TEA movement has been a “Pass the Word” effort with some media writing about its pros and cons, its importance, its efforts, profiteering, etc. In the late evening hours of November 2, 2010 the voting results in Florida will determine just how serious the Tea movement is, at least in Florida, and not until then. Pasen la Voz
Jorge Lovenguth – Florida 2010 United States Senator Candidate TEA political Party
By Bill Jenkins March 14, 2010 at 12:47 am
A movement that is 99.9% concerned with the size and scope of government power as well as being concerned with crazy deficit spending adding trillions to the national debt is constantly berated by those on the left.
If you saw someone spending their life savings and then running up the credit cards on the slot machines, I guess if you tell them they shouldn’t do that you are a racist wingnut and have the NY Times write a piece trying to remove credibility to your beliefs.
NY Times isn’t worth the paper it is printed on.