But Is The Tea Party Still Grassroots?
I don’t think so, not anymore.
In Nashville this weekend, we have seen a grassroots organization do a complete turnaround and become what it once loudly protested.
The movement, that came to be officially recognized almost a year ago but whose roots go back further than that, has been snuffed out and replaced in the public mind. The movement that began as a people’s movement of angry independent, libertarians and conservatives will now be thought as the movement of people like Palin, Dick Armey, Judson Phillips, Mark Skoda, etc. Essentially, a wholly owned subsidiary of the “Official Conservative Movement” and the Republican Party.
Sarah Palin spoke to roughly 1,100 people last night at the Opryland hotel. Tea Party convention attendees paid $549 to attend the entire event, and $349 just to see the former governor and vice-presidential candidate, who now is working as a pundit for FOX news, speak.
In some respect, it’s unclear the long-term impact that the convention will ultimately have on this year’s election cycle as we look toward 2012, but national, and international media, was fascinated by the event. If I were to speculate, which I am going to, it bears to at least look at the reality that the Tea Party Convention was of more interest overall to media that it was to the average voter. To spend that kind of money, where it is said that Palin was paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000, sort of defeats the purpose of a grassroots effort adamantly against high taxes, focusing on “Main Street rather than Wall-Street” and government being heard. This doesn’t even include the high prices of reserving a room at the Opryland Hotel.
It seems to me that average, working class citizens who were behind the original Tea Party protests would not be able to afford such a luxury.
From Politico:
Four Tennessee tea party activists who said they couldn’t afford the $550 tickets to the National Tea Party Convention staged a guerilla news conference just outside of the event to challenge its representation of the movement.
“There are a lot of citizens in the state of Tennessee today who could not afford to be here… particularly in this economy,” said Antonio Hinton, a 37-year old tea party activist from Knoxville. “They’re just as patriotic. They’re just as concerned. They care just as much about what’s going on as the folks that are in that room.”
There is no doubt that there are democrats and republicans alike who are frustrated and at the end of their ropes. But what did the convention do long-term? A few soundbites, Palin honing her message in front of a monied crowd and a story that lasted nationally for a few days delighting pundits but having no real impact on the “regular” guy.
As I said on Thursday, it quits being grassroots when the grassroots can’t even participate.
