Via the LAT comes an interesting piece on the Tea Party movement: Still a disorganized ‘tea party’.
The piece rather clearly underscores that the Tea Party movement is currently less a burgeoning national organization than a confederation of numerous groups across the country that is unlikely to coalesce beyond an inchoate alliance of frustration.
One of things that I found interesting is that the National Tea Party Convention is a for-profit enterprise. Now, I have no objection to persons making a profit, but civically minded organizations typically (never?) operate in such a fashion. It suggests that the organizers are less trying to build a new social movement/political party, but rather have found a way to make some money off of political discontent. I will say, however, that it is being presented to the public as tantamount to a party convention, not, say a Star Trek convention. CPAC, by comparisons, is a non-profit meeting.
Tickets to the event ain’t cheap: $560 (not including hotel room).
More on the for-profit aspect, see the following from MSNBC’s First Read: Tea Partying for Profit?
Again: I am not opposed to people making money. However, the motivations for a particular action matter. There is tension between the goal of forming a serious political movement and making a profit. It is worth noting that the social networking site Tea Party Nation affiliated with the convention is also a for-profit enterprise.
Even Redstate’s Erick Erickson finds this whole thing questionable:
Charging people $500.00 plus the costs of travel and lodging to go to a “National Tea Party Convention” run by a for profit group no one has ever heard of sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks.
Back to the confederal nature of the Tea Party movement noted above, on such group, American Liberty Alliance, has pulled out of participating in the National Tea Party Convention, at least in part because of the financing issues noted above. A letter of explanation form its executive Director and co-founder can be found here.
Other articles of interest on this topic:
Joe Scarborough writing in Newsweek: Is The Tea Party Over?
Fox New’s Special Report with Bret Baier: Will a Tea Party Convention Derail the Movement’s Progress?
The CSM: Unify the new American ‘tea party’? Good luck with that.
January 25th, 2024 at 9:52 am
How can that be?
I thought the whole Tea Party thing was all astroturf:
TPM
January 26th, 2024 at 10:13 am
Howard Roark, in the Fountainhead, epitomizes what the earliest American settlers discovered that did not exist in the world at the time. It was the ability for each individual to think, imagine, create, build and change the environment with their own sweat, even disturbing the established and accepted way things were done, and without fear of punishment. That was America, and what set her apart from all other nations, as cited in Save Pebble Droppers & Prosperity at Amazon and claysamerica.com. Individual freedom caused local government, close to the governed within a days horseback ride. The governed ruled, and they could change government in Town Halls or by vigilante movements, much like the Tea Party movement today. It is the tradition rising from a Howard Roark.