Beginning Of The End: Sarah Palin Hijacks The Tea Party Movement

Sarah Palin gave the keynote address at the first Tea Party Nation
convention. Following her remarks she responded to questions submitted
by members of the audience.

watch here

A.C. Kleinheider The Nashville Post February 7, 2010




	Sarah Palin speaks during the National Tea Party Convention at Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville, Tennessee February 6, 2010.

The tea party movement is dead. The one I was familiar with anyway. Judson Phillips held it down and Sarah Palin drove a stake right through its heart live last night on C-Span in front of an unsuspecting audience.

Sarah Palin didn’t give a tea party speech last night. She gave a partisan Republican address. It was a purely political speech designed to position her for a presidential run in 2012 or 2016. Period. She wasn’t there to celebrate the organic nature of a movement she had nothing to do with creating. She was there to co-opt the name and claim the brand as hers. And she did.

The movement, that came to be officially recognized almost a year ago but whose roots go back further than that, has been snuffed out and replaced in the public mind. The movement that began as a people’s movement of angry independent, libertarians and conservatives will now be thought as the movement of people like Palin, Dick Armey, Judson Phillips, Mark Skoda, etc. Essentially, a wholly owned subsidiary of the “Official Conservative Movement” and the Republican Party.

This new tea party bears no resemblance to the one that began a year ago as a reaction to the collapse of our financial system and the subsequent bailout. That movement of ragtag and unorganized libertarians, independents and conservatives was something new and unique. An authentic protest movement angered not just by the new President, Barack Obama, who had presided over the bailouts but the president who started the ball rolling and whose incompetence had led to the crisis in the first place, George W. Bush.

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Comment by KingofthePaupers on February 8, 2010 at 6:25pm: "Palin wasn’t there to celebrate the organic nature of a movement she had nothing to do with creating. She was there to co-opt the name and claim the brand as hers. And she did."
Jct: That's the problem when you know what you're against but not a goal you are for. Without a goal, there can never be success, and eventually, the aim-nowhere movement ends up a go-nowhere movement taken over by some charismatic government shill. Now if your goal were to fix the FED to provide interest-free financing, the good times would tell you when you had reached your goal.

Comment by Minuteman on February 7, 2010 at 10:34pm: Just look at this years' lineup of DC gatherings...8/28/10....Freedomworks......9/10/10 Glenn Beck.

Hell everyone wants to be one of us "sedistic Teabaggers" these days! hehhehheh....

Comment by Minuteman on February 7, 2010 at 10:31pm: To see the "real" Tea Party conventions keep a lookout on 4/15/10.

Comment by Minuteman on February 7, 2010 at 10:26pm: There is no "The Tea Party". It is split between several factions struggling for power. The event you refer to last night was Freedomworks. I agree they are trying to take control....

The real Tea Party(s) are the ones backing Rubio in Florida, not the poser in charge of FLA at the moment. Dick Armey better take heed to the writing on the wall too....

Don't be deterred. Stay with the movement. Just learn to read the Tea Leaves a little bit better.

Comment by Sustainablehome on February 7, 2010 at 6:47pm: Especially after her interview on Fox News Sunday Palin Leaves Door Open for 2012.

Comment by Tara on February 7, 2010 at 5:39pm: I was reading about this earlier today. This is certainly not good. Palin is a neocon through and through and besides, you can't fix stupid.