They're eating their own.


'The Tea Party Movement Is About To Be Hijacked': Activists Slam Plan
For Convention
Zachary Roth | January 11, 2010, 9:00AM

In the latest sign of rancor in Tea Party circles, a convention billed
as an effort to bring together conservative activists from across the
country is being attacked by some leading Tea Partiers as inauthentic,
too tied to the GOP, and -- at $549 per head -- too expensive for the
working Americans the movement aspires to represent.

The National Tea Party Convention, scheduled for early February in
Nashville, grabbed headlines after announcing that Sarah Palin and
Michele Bachmann would appear as speakers, Palin as the keynote.
According to a message on the convention's website, the event "is aimed
at bringing the Tea Party Movement leaders together from around the
nation." But organizers are a long way from unifying the notoriously
fractious movement.

Tea Party Patriots, which helped put together a September rally that
drew tens of thousands to Washington, view the confab -- which is being
held at Nashville's swank Opryland Gaylord hotel -- as the "usurpation
of a grassroots movement," according to Mark Meckler, a leader of the
group. "Most people in our movement can't afford anything like that,"
Meckler told TPMmuckraker, referring to the price tag. "So it's really
not aimed at the average grassroots person."

Robin Stublen, a Tea Party Patriots volunteer, echoed that view. "This
convention is $550 dollars," said Stublen. "How grassroots is that?"

Indeed, one conservative activist who has organized Tea Parties with
several local groups told TPMmuckraker that even though she lives in the
Nashville area, she still can't afford to attend. "To me its not worth
it," said Toni, who blogs at Bear Creek Ledger and asked that her last
name not be used. "I'm not gonna throw my money around for that."

"The Tea Party I know never had $1000 to pay for anything," another
conservative activist told TPMmuckraker.

The high cost may be driven by the speakers' fees that organizers are
shelling out. One activist who is familiar with organizers' plans told
TPMmuckraker that Palin is being paid $100,000, much of which is said to
have been raised by wealthy local donors. That figure could not be
confirmed.

The convention's prime organizer, Nashville criminal defense lawyer
Judson Phillips, founded Tea Party Nation, a for-profit company that
runs a networking site for activists. Phillips, a former local
prosecutor, didn't respond to several requests for comment, but he told
Politico that the convention was intended to make a profit so that Tea
Party Nation can "funnel money back into conservative causes" through a
527 group it plans to set up.

Mark Skoda, another of the activists behind the event, told TPMmuckraker
that the fees were required to pay for the event's costs. He added that
Tea Party Nation had urged volunteers to have their local Tea Party
group sponsor their attendance -- an idea that Stublen derided as
inconsistent with the concept of personal fiscal responsibility that the
movement professes. Skoda declined to comment on Palin's fee, citing
"the non-disclosure of speakers contracts."

Lurking beneath the concerns about the price-tag are vaguer fears.
First, that Phillips and his allies are using the convention to boost
their group's resources and its profile within the movement.

"The tea party movement is a grass-roots movement; it's not a
business," one skeptical Tennesee Tea Partier declared to Politico.

"Who are they and what do they stand for?" another conservative activist
asked TPMmuckraker, describing Phillips as "someone who is trying to
make a grab."

Perhaps even more unnerving to some activists, though, is the prospect
that Tea Party Nation may be co-opting the movement -- which prides
itself on its independence and authenticity -- on behalf of a
professional political class with ties to the GOP.

It hasn't been lost on members of the Tea Party Patriots that the Tea
Party Express -- which is run by a group of well-connected GOP
consultants and who the Patriots already view as a group of astroturf
parvenus -- will be at the convention. Perhaps even worse: though
Phillips has said that Tea Party Nation isn't working with the
Republican party, one activist told TPMmuckraker, with disapproval, that
organizers had voted to invite RNC chair Michael Steele to speak. Skoda
said he did not know whether such a decision had been made, but that he
would support the idea. The RNC did not say whether Steele has received
an invitation.

"The Tea Party Movement is about to be hijacked," wrote one activist in
an online comment recently. "TeaPartyNation.com orgaziners are hard
lined GOP who use the proverbial veil of 'conservatism' to attract
supporters."

Stublen echoed that suspicion. "I think what we have in the movement is
the GOP trying to take control, and a lot of the groups are trying to
fight them on this," he told TPMmuckraker. Stublen described the
convention as "too GOP" and Phillips as "too politically
connected."

Stublen also said he viewed with distrust two Phillips allies with ties
to the GOP. Michael Patrick Leahy, a delegate to the 2008 Republican
convention, founded Top Conservatives On Twitter, which has been
embraced by Beltway Republicans like Karl Rove. And Eric Odom, whose
Liberty American Liberty Alliance is a co-sponsor of the convention, is
a professional conservative organizer.

"I think they're all good people," said Stublen. "But I question the
motive in this."

(c) 2009 TPM Media

--- Xnews/5.04.25