'The Tea Party Movement Is About To Be Hijacked'

[kpete]

Source: Talking Points Memo

'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?"

Read more: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/the_tea_party_movement_is_about_to_be_hijacked_act.php?ref=fpa

[thereismore]

1. They are learning that poor people don't get to play. nt

[KansDem]

2. So the hijackers themselves are about to be hijacked?

Wasn't the Teabagger movement a disillusioned faction of conservative GOPers? And now this "movement," led by the National Tea Party, is about to be hijacked by...what?...the "Tea Party Patriots?"

Gotta have a program! Can't tell the players without a program! :crazy:

Oh, and...:popcorn:

[zbdent]

3. they've probably realized that the only people who can afford to attend the convention

are the "grass-roots" multi-millionaires/billionaires who founded it ...

[Demeter]

4. Well, That's Cynical

So the Grassroots GOP is going to be taken over by?

Does this ring a bell?

Grassroots Democrats flock to Howard Dean; MSM shuts down his campaign with slander.

Hillary tries to take over the grassroots, but is shut out by a fresh face: Obama.

Obama renegs on every campaign promise he ever made, and we get Bush IV or 5 or 6, depending on whether you count Reagan terms as BFEE-controlled. And even Clinton's time in office was skirting the edges of the "Morning in America" crowd.

Well, of course, if Obama is a total dud by 2012, they've GOT to take over the GOP again.

[YOY]

5. It just gets better and better...

n.t.

[Jefferson23]

6. I thought this was an interesting view on who else is infiltrating the tea baggers movement.

From this morning on Democracy Now, see the video at the link.

White Power USA: The Rise of Right-Wing Militias in America

Since President Obama’s election, there’s been a surge in hate crimes, political murders and assassination threats in this country. Right-wing militias are on the rise in several states, and high rates of unemployment have further stoked anger against racial minorities and recent immigrants. Independent filmmakers Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen go inside the white nationalist movement to file an exclusive report



http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/11/white_power_usa_the_rise_of

[Canuckistanian]

7. The Teabagger movement was a corporate conservative creation anyways

So it's really going back to it's TRUE roots.

Did they really think all those bus rides were free?

[Vincardog]

15. They should ask the pitiful few who paid for the bus rides to pay for the conventions.

[Canuckistanian]

24. No way. They're "free lunch" conservatives

They'll only show up if there's something in it for them.

Whether it's free bus rides or being treated almost as royalty for a few hours, they want their payment.

Everything is a business transaction to them.

[Lasher]

8. Sometimes I don't understand exactly what it is they're protesting about.

I don't think they do either. Now they'll be protesting against one another. Fine by me.

[GreenPartyVoter]

11. Love that toon! If anyone ever protests these guys, they should enlarge that and use it as their

sign.

[Lasher]

20. Thank you.

Teabagger threads keep me amused while I'm waiting for another episode of Orly Taitz, dentist at law.

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. What a great cartoon!!

[FSogol]

9. It has already been hacked.....by Stupidity! n/t

[drm604]

10. "Hijacked" by the same astroturfers who started it.

:rofl:

[jberryhill]

12. The Association of Paranoids Has Been Infiltrated!

Oy.

[blondeatlast]

13. Karma--ya gotta love it. nt

[MidwestTransplant]

14. They are shocked that a bunch of Corpratists are scheming to take their money?

Shocker huh. They have been voting against themselves their whole lives in favor of the very people trying to rip them off again but they just don't get it. Morons.

[The Midway Rebel]

16. Their work is done.

They sucessfully destroyed any real chance at health insurance reform. The only thing they can do now is continue to make money for their corporate media overlords.

[Bitwit1234]

17. Are they running out of TEA

That's what the elites do have afternoon TEA...of course that's what they call democrats "elites"...seems like republicans are the ones trying to be.

[AuntPatsy]

19. The good thing is perhaps they are finally realizing that the likes of hannity rush etc could care

less about the average american, there is them and there is us, and regardless if you call yourselves liberal, conservative, repug, dem, matters not to those in power, we the average american are considered acceptable losses of little true worth but good only for partisan votes...nothing more, nothing less,

like it or not we the average citizen be they left or right are all on the same side and as such, the enemy is not us, it is them, the sooner we realize that the sooner we will regain that which we have already lost along with all that we are long past due....

we have been left standing at the doorway of our own country begging for those left over crumbs from a meal that we the people prepared and they the rulers consumed......



thankfully there are in fact a few Dem's who honestly care about the average american, but sorry to say, none on the other side could care one iota, so in the end, the only way to vote if you feel the urge to is to vote democratic, anything less and you lose any chance you might have had to be heard ever again....

[Dollface]

21. They'd have to pay me a lot more than $550 to listen to Palin and Bachmann.

:puke: :puke: :puke: :puke: :puke:

[Born_A_Truman]

22. $ucks to be them!

$arah don't do no talkin' for no $$.

[silverhandorder]

23. Good guys get shout out from the begining as always.

I like Ron Paul type of tea parties they are at least liberal on social issues. This breed on other hand just seems like another wing of republican party.