Strange Brew—Tea Party Controversy!

Oh so predictable and so unfortunate! On the eve of the first national Tea Party Convention set for later this month, we now have a storm brewing over the founder's integrity. Apparently, this stems from him forming a "for profit" organization and charging guests upward of $500 to attend. Two prominent conservative policitians have backed out but the steadfast Sarah Palin is vowing to continue to be the keynote speaker (at least at press time). How will the drama end?

As this is my second post, and I've had a few days to think about my new foray into the blog-0-sphere, I want to proactively state that my blogs are going to be based on two "O"s—Osmosis and Opinion. As a mother of 4 young boys, it is not my intention to spend 12 hours a day researching, fact checking, wordsmithing, creating extensive bibliographies of support for my claims, remembering everyone's name involved in the stories, nor finding really big collegiate words to prove how academically gifted I am. I often have to write and dash—in the real world, there are diapers to be changed and dinner to be made. And I think I want to be REAL, REFRESHING and REFLECT how the "average" American with a lot on their plate FEELS without having to censor those feelings for fear of not having written a "practically perfect in every way" paragraph.

I will surely dangle participles, mangle a "syll—aaaable" as a past president once said, and probably err in punctuation as well. I may even hit "post" in mid-sentence. When my book Eats, Shoots, and Leaves (I haven't figured out how to underline a book title here yet!) is not nearby and I can't reach for my thesaurus, I may be redundant with both adjectives and transitions. But I hope as time goes on, practice will improve my witicisms and that brevity will replace what, for now, will be some lengthy starter blogs! I also hope to improve on digression—which I have just done once again! Sorry, it comes with age.

Okay, back to the topic—we were discussing the tea party controversy! I consider myself a founding tea partier, meaning I have BEEN to a tea party—the first tea party. I did not jump on the bus and attend them all summer long. But I watched with admiration as the movement grew. Before anyone knew what they were, how they would be received, before Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman became outspoken supporters, there were many naysayers. Some of these people have now become the tea party's fair weather friends after sitting back and watching what these brave, every day Americans endured all spring and summer long last year to emerge as a REAL and persuasive force in this country. Now these former naysayers are not only excited to throw tea in the harbor but they want to take the helm of the ship too.

I remain for now, a supporter of Sarah Palin, though I have witnessed as of late some things that give me pause. I will write a blog about the "whys" later. However, that being said, I noted immediately when she was named as the keynote for this first event in 2010, that it did not serve the tea party to have at its center, a "famous" person BECAUSE it may become future fodder for the far left to increase their discrediting of this movement as NOT grass roots or "from" the people. To the uneducated, this lapse in judgment will provide the very thin shred of evidence that somehow this has always been a "well funded machine" if someone like Palin, who is NOW a rock star, is seen as its leader. It is a shame to me that this noble group of American citizens like myself has begun to allow the Republican party to lay claim that "they were always with the tea party people." I know from being there that it was Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and VERY few others at its humble debut in April 2009. Governor Rick Perry did attend the tea party in Austin where he made his now infamous "we can secede" speech—did you know he didn't actually say "Texas could secede?" but you know how the media spin goes. But most Republicans wrote off the tea partiers as "crazy, white, racist, middle aged, angry, uneducated, extremists." By the way, I will admit that I said Texas could secede at the tea party I attended in San Antonio, while being interviewed by college students doing a documentary on the historic event. Of course, I said it in jest. My words were something like "if it gets too crazy here, Texas can always secede" but if I run for office someday, you can bet that this clip will be shown in a political ad to discredit my intelligence and/or mental stability.

I remember broadcasts following the first tea parties where both Newt Gingrich AND Karl Rove dismissed the tea partiers as a fringe movement and said that they were a "small" portion of the population. CNN and MSNBC didn't even mention the tea parties and when covering them later in the week, completely maligned the people as "Nazi" freaks or "nutjobs.". LIFE Magazine and all of the "year in review" issues of 2009 magazines didn't even feature a single photograph of this historic movement. This now makes me wonder what was NOT in my elementary school history textbooks. Anyone who does NOT see the media bias as of 2009, literally has their head in east and west coast sand. To see how suddenly things have changed just strengthens the resolve in those of us who are watching our government and media representatives for any signs of integrity—I can say that I haven't truly found anyone I can FULLY count on yet. But I have been watching certain programs that have been very consistent and have also been reading books written by and/or endorsed by people who SEEM worthy of my trust so far. Time will tell.

Now, I can't speak to why the founder for this convention made this group a "for profit" organization but on the surface, I don't see what the issue is here. If you're going to attend a convention, there are costs involved. If this "real" American citizen has given his time, effort and creativity to organizing a mass group of people, I don't see where the problem is in him making a profit. After all, if we support capitalism, creating jobs and employing Americans is a good thing, right?

I don't know where this notion that it is distasteful to earn money has come from. Everyone who has been a president in recent memory is WEALTHY yet runs on being the "common man." C'mon, America. This is ridiculous. We all know they're rich, privileged, Ivy Leage educate, upper class, connected. We know the white house is bought and paid for—that's WHY we're outraged. However, that doesn't mean that someone who legitimately starts something from nothing should not earn a buck for it, do we? That's the spirit of entrepreneurialism. My gosh, for all of the torture inflicted on you for standing up to our tyrannical government, you SHOULD be paid for your trouble. You don't expect the Obama administration to support the tea party movement with government grants, do you? Naw, that's only if you're a running a mosque funneling funds into Pakistan training camps—note, that is a joke, Ariana!

Next, much has been made about Sarah Palin receiving upwards of $125,000 to speak at this event. Again, how much do Bill Clinton and Barack Obama get paid at fundraising dinners? My understanding—call me naive—is that Sarah Palin is channeling much of her profits from both her book and speaking engagements into a PAC that will be used to effect change in Washington. Where is the conflict of interest here?

Lastly, as for Michelle Bachman (and the other representative's) decision to back out, I don't know enough here to know what I don't know. Perhaps there is a statute that forbids sitting leaders to attend for-profit rallies in Tennesse. It is probably purely political and that brings me back to integrity. Motives are being scrutinized by Americans. If this backout was done to get elected in 2010, we the people aren't going to buy it. But if it was for purely altruistic or noble reasons, then we will support it. The one thing I know is this. The enemies of the tea party movement are always looking for reasons to divide and discredit this group. But they can't. We are the silent majority. And we wait. We watch Nancy Pelosi threaten to stuff our mouths full of cake and we just can't wait for November 2010 when finally, we can feed it to her on her way out the door. She can give part of that cake to Barbara Boxer and Maxine Waters. Nancy should love this—after all, it's redistribution.

This tea party convention controversy is a lot of tempest in a pot of tea.

This group is unique and is the party of LIMITED GOVERNMENT. The leadership needs to come from within and should be led by an almost reluctant or unknown outsider—someone like a Captain "Sully"—an accidental hero. I also believe that values need to trump ideology and that religious dogma and abortion views have no place in this new party OF THE PEOPLE. Americans are tired of BOTH majority parties. It does not serve the Tea Party movement to align itself with either one. As a tea party attendee, the reason we went was to communicate en masse to the U.S. Government that "we the people" are tired of them not understanding that they work for US on BOTH sides of the aisle.

Editor's Note: You remember the days when you were asked to write "two pages" double spaced and you couldn't figure out how to fill up the page? I don't have those days. I have SO much on my mind, I could write a book in a week if were able to lock myself in a hotel room. But I make a promise that for blogging purposes, I am really, really going to try to get concise. It goes against my philosophy that if you can't say it in a few words, it probably needs to be restated simpler! But for now, the venting continues. I'll hit my stride. Just be thankful I didn't author the healthcare bill—it might be 3,000 pages! :) Off to have some Earl Grey.