Palin in Wonderland, Tea Party held by mad hatter

Eric Hill

Opinion Editor

Woe is the fact that Sarah Palin still draws an audience, but that is exactly what happened at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville, Tenn. this weekend. As the keynote speaker of the convention, Palin began her rant with exhortations of “Do you love your freedom? Thank God for your freedom!” “I am so proud to be American!” and “Happy birthday Ronald Reagan!”

Before I vomited in my mouth, I listened for over an hour as this maniacal woman threw platitudes left and right like a drunken backseat driver on a campaign bus. These were shortly followed by the exclamation, “America is ready for another revolution!” Now I am not a person who endorses partisan politics—I believe that both sides of this aisle are ineffective without counterweight or intelligent compromise. This, however, takes the cake as far as bad rhetoric goes these past 10 years of political hockey.

I can’t even describe the full number of errors in Palin’s speech, both in the statements made of conservative propaganda and anecdotes of recent political events. The largest (literally) that I can show is the references made by Palin during the speech that the Tea Party movement was supported by “millions and millions of Americans,” which is about as true as a claim that President Barack Obama has billions of Americans’ support. That is a patently false statement.

The Tea Party movement is an ultra-conservative movement with no leader, no agenda and no political strength. The Web site, www.teapartypatriots.ning.com, which is supposedly the home of the Tea Party movement, has only about 20,000 members nationwide. This of course is also suspect, because there are about six or seven other main sites that claim to be the center of the Tea Party movement. Glenn Beck and Fox News have been accused many times of attempting to bolster the perceived size of the movement by staging political rallies and splicing footage to make crowds look bigger. All together there were only 1,100 people at this convention to begin with.  According to the New York Times the event was a for-profit shindig at at the Gaylord Opryland hotel.  600 of the attendees stayed for a little over 2 days and paid $549 to hear a selection of speakers and a dine on a lobster and steak dinner.  The remaining 500 attendees paid a modest $349 for Palin’s speech alone, so much for the grassroots, “humble before God” message.

Altogether this movement is a scam, cobbled together by a few retired Republican politicos who are preying on the sentiments of a disaffected population. The claims are great: that Congress is not listening to the public, that it is spending too much, that it needs to go back to more conservative values. They aim their attacks solely at this past year’s administration, ignoring any circumstantial evidence of the last 8 years’ mismanagement of the executive branch. Unfortunately for them, the Tea Partiers aren’t saying anything that hasn’t been said every time a Democrat takes office. They have no plan of action other than to complain. One of their most popular techniques is to mail hundreds of “pink slips” to members of Congress telling them that they are fired for not upholding their constitutional oath. I would have enjoyed seeing this happen back when Republicans passed the Patriot Act.

Another grievance the tea partiers have against the current administration is too much big government. They forget to address the fact that Republicans oversaw the largest expansion of the federal government since the creation of Medicare by establishing Homeland Security. Unlike true libertarians, the likes of Ron Paul’s followers or the national libertarian party, the Tea Partiers don’t want to abolish the Federal Reserve Bank or the Internal Revenue Service, they just want to hearken back to a time of … I don’t think they even know. Palin claimed the Tea Party movement is “bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” One has to wonder if the Tea Party movement is bigger than a folksy woman with a teleprompter.

While I can’t argue against the call for reform, and even the creation of a third party, the Tea Party is not the third party America needs. America needs a youth party, one that can leave the old ideological struggles behind, not stir them up again. The third party should be about encouraging the best decisions for the country, not sticking to partisan lines that don’t make any sense in light of the complex challenges we are facing. One cannot say the policies of the past will indefinitely solve the problems of the future—even our founding fathers knew that.

Overall the Tea Party is a mad political cult, calling for conservative principles that are not fully understood, blasting with religious overtones and generally inflating itself to distract people from the truth that our political system has been doing this to us for decades. It will take more than some raucous finger pointing to solve our problems and it will take concentrated effort and time to turn back the accumulated damage. The only bright spot in Palin’s speech was when she said, “Contested primaries are not civil war, they are democracy in action and they’re beautiful.” With any luck the tea partiers will split the Republican vote and then we’ll have an opportunity for some real reform.