There’s no doubt, of course, that the loose conglomerate of groups fomented by GOP operatives known as the Tea Party has had a dramatic effect on several Republican primaries. The term “Tea Party” certainly stands for a certain amount of ballot-box power.
It’s less clear what it means that the promoters/exploiters of the movement are apparently no longer able to successfully arrange large political gatherings of Tea-Partiers who are willing to fork over big bucks to attend.
Back in June we learned that the much hyped Tea Party Unity convention was being canceled and rescheduled to October 14-16 in Las Vegas. This barely registered a blip with the media at the time …
We’re about a month out from their new announced date, and I thought I’d check them out and see how things were coming along.
Well my first stop was a Google search to find their web site. I found it, but this link should speak for itself. Check out nationalteapartyconvention.com. Oh you got a page not found error? Well there’s nothing wrong with your browser, the site doesn’t exist any more. And there’s absolutely zero media or blog coverage of the event since they announced the dates were changing. Not really what you’d expect for an event featuring Sharron Angle, Lou Dobbs, Joseph Farah, and Andrew Breitbart is it?
Well it gets better. I wanted to make sure the convention really was canceled and they weren’t just having web issues or neglected to do any PR for their event. So I put in a call to the Mirage hotel and asked if I could book a room in their block for the event. Turns out the room block had been canceled and the Mirage had no record of the event.
So there you have it, the much hyped Tea Party Unity Convention is now completely canceled. Maybe they shouldn’t have paid Sarah Palin $100,000 to keynote the first event and they might have had a little more staying power financially.
The traditional press is still obsessed with writing about the Tea Party and the power they hold. And yes in the most recent primary elections their candidates did prevail. But those wins have also put races back on the board the Democrats weren’t counting on winning. This cancellation shows that they have zero grassroots strength. It’s GOP operatives and big money that control everything, it’s not some sort of bottom up effort lead by real people and supported by the conservative community.
I’m not sure if the Tea Party Nation’s convention falling apart denotes zero grassroots strength, or just the drying up of the Tea-Party-hucksterism market.
The last time around, when the Tea Party Nation organized its first national event in Nashville in February, attendees forked out $549 to attend or $349 just for Sarah Palin’s speech. Attendance, evidently, fell short of organizers’ expectations.
This time, the Unity Convention was offering three different alternatives to Tea Partiers looking to be parted from their money:
Full Convention Registration (3 days) – $399
Saturday Only Convention Registration – $175
Traditional American Concert & Symposium – $99
Registrations, presumably, were underwhelming.