Day: 9/18/2010

Tea Party Convention: Failure To Launch [Update]

Posted by on September 18, 2010 at 3:51 pm. 3 Comments :

The Tea Party Nation appears to be coming apart. Plans for the National Tea Party Unity Convention have been in turmoil since it was first announced last February. Their original date was in mid-July, but that was scuttled for a variety of reasons that all sounded like excuses to me. So they rescheduled for October. At the time I wrote that the convention’s prospects were dim and I predicted their demise.

“This looks bad for the Tea Party Convention and for the Tea Party in general. If they can’t whip up enough excitement to populate their big ‘unity’ conference, they are going to have a hard time motivating voters who are not nearly as engaged as the sort of people who flock to these gatherings. Time will tell if the rescheduling has the desired effect. If not, the next press release we see may be the one announcing that the convention was canceled.”

Tea Party CrusadeGuess what? The web site for the convention is gone. Disappeared. Ceased to be. There is no remnant of it or explanation. There is no announcement of its demise, nor that of the event. The site and the convention have dissolved into the ether. There is also no mention of the event on the site of its sponsor, Tea Party Nation. (Here is a cached copy of the convention web site).

Raven Brooks, the executive director of Netroots Nation, dug a little further and confirmed the that Tea Partiers have indeed been left high and dry. He called the hotel who told him that “the room block had been canceled and the Mirage had no record of the event.” Netroots Nation, it should be noted, recently held a very successful convention in Las Vegas. Perhaps the Tea Party Nation would like to contact Brooks and get some advice on how it’s done.

I also called the Mirage and they told me the same thing they told Brooks. In addition, I asked if the event had been canceled or if it had never been scheduled in the first place. They told me that they had no contract at all for the event. The cached copy of the convention web site has the Palazzo as the event’s hotel, although that was the first location in July. The October booking was for the Mirage. I called the Palazzo anyway and they also had no record of the event.

This is beginning to sound like a scam. The promoter, Judson Phillips, was broadly criticized when he mounted his first convention for turning the Tea Party movement into a for-profit affair and for paying Sarah Palin $100,000 to read platitudes off of her hand. So it would be interesting to find out what will happen to any registration fees that were collected for the convention (at $400.00 a pop)? Were the speakers, who included Sharron Angle, Lou Dobbs, and Andrew Breitbart, paid for committing to appear? Will the sorry dupes who shelled out for hotel room deposits or airfare just have to eat their losses?

Back in June I wondered about the possibility of a future press release announcing that this convention would be canceled. I guess I gave them too much credit because it appears they’ve decided to just pretend it never existed. That’s pretty much what we’ll be saying about the Tea Party in a couple of years.

Christine O’Donnell Flunks Remedial Republicanism

Posted by on September 18, 2010 at 12:59 pm. 5 Comments :

The latest Tea Party Mama Grizzly to ascend within the ranks of the GOP asylum is Delaware candidate for senate, Christine O’Donnell. Last Tuesday O’Donnell defeated “moderate” Republican, Mike Castle and will face Chris Coons in the general election in November. This should be fun considering her record as an unabashed schizoid. But between now and then she will have to undergo an extreme right-wing makeover.

After O’Donnell’s surprise victory she immediately announced that she would appear on both Fox News Sunday and CBS’s Face the Nation. But she just as quickly canceled both appearances. This is in keeping with the Republican model this year. Both Rand Paul and Sharron Angle did much the same thing.

The reason O’Donnell canceled is because she had to attend Remedial Republicanism classes (RemGOP 101). As an inexperienced Tea Bagging nominee she has not been properly prepared for her new, high profile, public role. So despite her initial agreement to talk to the press, her handlers have been instructed to reverse course so that her coaching can begin first.

There is much to learn for someone in her position. She has to become acquainted with Facebook and Twitter, and make those the primary outlets for her public statements. This is critical because those platforms protect her from actually engaging in a dialogue or having to respond to annoying questions about her background or agenda. She also has to learn how to dodge, obfuscate, mislead, and smear. These skills are important in the event that she finds herself in a position where she is unable to evade a conventional reporter.

In the few hours after her primary win, O’Donnell made some embarrassing gaffes that illustrate the need for sequestering her in the RemGOP re-education facility. She proved that she doesn’t even know basics like Media Freeze-Out. The fact that she would book a non-Fox interview is evidence of just how far behind she is in her studies. To catch up she will have to buckle down and cram for the next few days.

Luckily she has many experienced tutors to help her bone up for the final exam on November 2nd. Paul, Angle, Joe Miller, Ken Buck, and of course, Sarah Palin, have all demonstrated their expert ability to avoid all press contact except, of course, for Fox News. And even then, stay away from “news” related programming by only visiting friendly, partisan, hacks, like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.

O’Donnell must heed the advice of her mentors. Sarah Palin recently told Fox’s O’Reilly that O’Donnell should “Speak through FOX News.” Sharron Angle has a policy of only appearing on TV programs that allow her to beg for money. These are amongst the lessons that O’Donnell needs to internalize and adhere to.

It’s a good thing for these GOP cowards that the media doesn’t care if they are being played for saps. Palin can fire off rounds from the safety of her Facebook page and the press dutifully reports it as if it were newsworthy. Angle, Paul, and the others can flaunt their delinquency knowing full well that what they say on Fox News, or at podiums before Tea Bagger rallies, will still be covered by the rest of the media stenographers. Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation demonstrated the typical behavior of the compliant press when O’Donnell backed out of her booking. Schieffer booked GOP strategist Ed Rollins instead. It never occurred to Schieffer to call Chris Coons, O’Donnell’s Democratic opponent, who ought to be just as timely a guest, except for the fact that he isn’t a whack-job Republican.

So don’t expect to see much of O’Donnell between now and election day outside of the warm confines of Fox News. The same goes for her role models and mentors. If there is one thing you can be certain that the right-wing does well, it’s teaching their wards how to dodge scrutiny and manufacture their own PR.