Thoughts on the Nashville Tea Party Convention and Sarah Palin

The best thing to happen to the tea party movement is Sarah Palin. It is very clear she did not know the circumstances involved in finding the money to get her to Nashville. It is also very clear that the money is not going to her — it is going to the cause. She’ll use this money as part of a war chest to help elect likeminded people. I think the tea party movement largely exists due to the absence of real leadership. Too often the tea party activists elected people who claimed to be concerned about the cost of government and then got to DC and betrayed the voters’ trust. Sarah Palin’s governance shows she not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. As her voice grows, many of the voices of the alleged tea party leaders will diminish. Palin’s history is one of a woman who gets involved and leaves places better than she found them. The tea party movement will be left better off by Sarah Palin. And I hope that some of those who brought her in to the tea party movement will exit through the door she entered. I was profoundly disappointed to hear Joseph Farah of World Net Daily hijack the convention and try to treat the birther issue as legitimate. The birther issue is not legitimate. There is no lingering constitutional issue. There never was. Yesterday, I spent a lot of time talking about the meaning of the tea party movement and voter angst. Once Farah opened his claptrap, every question was about the birther movement. Way to go. And that goes to a larger issue with this particular convention. With few expections, among them Sarah Palin, the featured speakers were virtual unknowns or, like Farah, increasingly on the fringe...read more