Right before she looked at the notes on her hand

As Sarah Palin left the stage at the inaugural National Tea Party Convention here Saturday night, the crowd erupted into chants of “Run Sarah Run!”

“I think you like her!” said Judson Phillips, the chief organizer of the convention, when the ovation finally stopped and people had stepped down from the chairs where they had been standing and waving flags.

Ms. Palin gave the Tea Party crowd exactly what they wanted to hear, declaring the primacy of the Tenth Amendment in limiting government powers, complaining about the bailouts and the “generational theft” of rising deficits, and urging the audience to back conservative challengers in contested primaries.

“America is ready for another revolution!” she told the crowd, prompting the first of several standing ovations.

The speech was closely watched as a potential signal of Ms. Palin’s political future and the extent to which the convention would embrace her. But Ms. Palin, while aligning herself firmly with the Tea Party, nevertheless urged the 1,100 delegates who had gathered in a hotel ballroom not to let the movement be defined by any one leader.

“This is about the people, and it’s bigger than any one king or queen of a tea party, and it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter,” she said.

That was just one of several digs at President Obama. “How’s that hopey-changey thing workin’ out for you?” she asked at one point. She blasted him for rising deficits, “apologizing for America” in speeches in other countries, and for allowing the so-called Christmas bomber to board a plane headed for the United States, saying he was weak on the war on terrorism.

“To win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law,” she declared.

Ms. Palin gave little hint to her political plans when Mr. Phillips, the organizer, prodded her in a brief question-and-answer period after her 40-minute speech. She said she would support those candidates who “understand free market principles” and “personal responsibility.”

Without saying which candidates she would support, she said she would campaign for conservative challengers in some Republican primaries.

“This is how we’re going to find the cream of the crop to face a challenger in the general,” she said. “Let’s not be afraid of contested primaries.”

When he asked her about the “two words that scare liberals: President Palin,” she demurred, smiling and looking to the side of the stage where she said her youngest daughter, Piper, was watching.

And pressed about the relationship between the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, and whether the latter should become a third party, Ms. Palin suggested the two should be compatible.

“The Republican Party would be really smart to start trying to absorb as much of the Tea Party movement as possible,” she said. “This is a beautiful movement because it is shaping the way politics are conducted. You’ve got both party machines running scared.”

The convention had gathered here to try to turn the activism of the Tea Party rallies over the last year into actual political power. Her speech was the keynote event of the convention, and the big draw for many of the 600 people who had paid $549 to attend – another 500, organizers said, paid $349 just to see for her speech alone.

The convention had been a pretty sedate affair until the Palin speech, with delegates sitting through panel discussions about how to effect changes in primary elections and how to use new technology to Tea Party advantage. But by the time she took the stage after the closing dinner Saturday night, convention-goers were hungry for the red meat.

They had begun lining up outside the ballroom three hours before the speech, breaking out at one point into “God Bless America.” As Judson Phillips, the chief convention organizer, warmed up the crowd for her speech, it erupted in chants of “USA! USA!” They raised a toast to Ronald Reagan, whose 99th birthday would have been Saturday. (“To Ronnie,” said one woman wearing sequins at the back of the room.)

When Andrew Breitbart, the founder of BigGovernment.com, introduced Ms. Palin by describing her as “the first person to tell us about the death panel,” the crowd cheered.

Ms. Palin’s fee for speaking was reported to be $100,000, and she was criticized by some Tea Party activists for taking a fee, much as the convention itself was criticized for charging a ticket price that is too high for tea partiers who consider themselves fiscal conservatives. But Mr. Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, the social networking site that sponsored the convention, refused to talk about how much she was paid.

“I’ll simply say this: when you get a speaker of the caliber of Governor Palin, it’s not done on the basis of a handshake,” he said. He added that there had been a confidentiality clause in the contract organizers signed with Ms. Palin. “Contractually I’m not allowed to talk about it,” he said. “I promised I wouldn’t do it.”

And Ms. Palin said she would make no apologies for taking money and turning it back, she said, to conservative causes, though she has not specified which ones she will donate to.

“I will live, I will die for the people of America,” she said. “This party that we call the Tea Party, this movement, as I say, is the future of politics in America.”

From the times … more….

Palin Assails Obama at Tea Party Meeting – NYTimes.com.

Trouble in Tbag land?

Three former allies of the National Tea Party Convention are planning a guerilla press conference near the convention hall Saturday afternoon to highlight what they contend are the organizers’ efforts to hijack the tea party movement.

The three men, Anthony Shreeve, Robert Kilmarx and Mark Herr, are Tennessee tea party activists who were involved in the early stages of planning the convention and say they were pushed out after disputes with lead convention organizers Judson and Sherry Phillips, who contend that they resigned.

The disputes have since gone public and turned ugly. At their press conference – which they plan to hold in the same sprawling hotel convention center that is hosting the convention – the three “intend to challenge [the convention] on all levels,” said Shreeve.

They announced the presser in a Friday night email to local and national reporters covering the convention, though Shreve admits he did not seek permission from the hotel to use the facility. “If they run us out, we will have it in the parking lot,” he said.

Since parting ways with the Phillipses, the three have formed a coalition of 34 tea party groups from around Tennessee, and have blasted the convention for its $550 tickets, lavish trappings (including a steak-and-lobster banquet on Saturday where Sarah Palin will deliver the keynote address), for-profit status, and ties to the Republican Party.

“This movement is not about the Republican Party. It is a grassroots movement about we the people,” said Shreeve, who said he resigned from the convention steering committee in protest over the convention’s unusual finances.

As first reported by POLITICO, the convention is being run by a for-profit Tennessee corporation called Tea Party Nation that also operates a social network site with the same name. The company is registered to Judson Phillips, a previously little-known criminal defense attorney whose efforts to position himself as a national tea party leader made him some enemies in state tea-party circles. Phillips intended to turn a profit from the convention, with the stated intent of seeding a so-called 527 group that would air ads praising conservative candidates or criticizing their opponents, but on Friday he told reporters there likely wouldn’t be much profit, joking with reporters that he hoped to gross “in the high two figures.”

In an email to supporters last week, Sherry Phillips said that unnamed “former members were unanimously banned from our site for reasons running the gamut from antagonism to passing on confidential information. These members have been blogging, as well as discussing their association with liberal media outlets and conspiring with each other to, ‘Take TPN and this convention down.’”

The group, Ensuring Liberty Corp., is a nonprofit that will do direct marketing and organizing and will eventually be accompanied by a political action committee arm of the same name that will contribute directly to candidates.

Its group’s president, Mark Skoda, presented it, during a news conference jam-packed with national and international press, as the next step in the grass-roots tea party movement.

“The idea is essentially to act as ferocious as we are about our government being fiscally responsible as we will about our political process,” said Skoda, a 55-year-old technology consultant from Memphis who helped organize the convention.

Reminding reporters that “this is a part-time movement, we all have day jobs,” Skoda said his group “will allow people from around the country, perhaps in districts that are not competitive, to be able to participate their skills, to contribute their time, figure out what’s going on in other locations and ultimately contribute money to be used to fund numerous races across the country.”

Ensuring Liberty enters a crowded field of political groups seeking to channel the energy behind the tea party movement into fundraising. A search of an Internal Revenue Service database on Friday found 25 nonprofit groups with “tea party” in their name. And, in the past few months, several existing political action committees have positioned themselves to raise money from newly engaged tea party activists, while a handful of fresh efforts have recently launched.

As first reported by POLITICO, the convention came under fire from former supporters and conservative leaders for its high ticket prices, top-down structure and selling of sponsorships for as much as $50,000, as well as the for-profit status of the company running it, Tea Party Nation. Thecompany shelled out $100,000 to pay Sarah Palin’s speaking fee, while its president Judson Phillips planned to turn a profit from the convention, which he said he intended to use to seed a so-called 527 group.

As sponsors and top speakers have withdrawn and the event has struggled to sell tickets – at $350 a pop – to Palin’s keynote speech, former allies and prominent conservatives have accused Phillips of trying to use the convention to turn a buck or vault him into a leadership role in the decentralized tea party movement. Yet Phillips and his wife and co-organizer Sherry Phillips have largely left these criticisms unanswered until now.

But in an email to members of Tea Party Nation, the social network run by the company putting on the convention, Sherry Phillips launched a blistering attack against her perceived foes, and defended her motivations and her husband’s.

“We never did this to make us rich or famous,” she wrote. “Quite the contrary, we are patriots who love our country, our members and the people who are coming to Nashville to attend this great event.”

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin told Fox News on Thursday evening that, unlike Reps. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), she still intends to speak at the convention, despite the growing controversy over the obscure for-profit entity running the event.

“Oh, you betcha I’m going to be there,” Palin told Greta Van Susteren. “I’m going to speak there because there are people traveling from many miles away to hear what that tea party movement is all about and what that message is that should be received by our politicians in Washington. I’m honored to get to be there.”

Palin is getting $100,000 to deliver the keynote address at the conference. The 2008 vice presidential candidate insisted that her fee will “go right back into the cause” in the form of donations “to people and to events, those things that I believe in that will help perpetuate the message, the message being, Government, you have constitutional limits. You better start abiding by them.”

more….

WATCH: Palin Urges GOP-Tea Party Merger, Re-Commits To Convention.

Tea Bagging

In the latest sign of rancor in Tea Party circles, a convention billed as an effort to bring together conservative activists from across the country is being attacked by some leading Tea Partiers as inauthentic, too tied to the GOP, and — at $549 per head — too expensive for the working Americans the movement aspires to represent.

The National Tea Party Convention, scheduled for early February in Nashville, grabbed headlines after announcing that Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann would appear as speakers, Palin as the keynote. According to a message on the convention’s website, the event “is aimed at bringing the Tea Party Movement leaders together from around the nation.” But organizers are a long way from unifying the notoriously fractious movement.

more…..

‘The Tea Party Movement Is About To Be Hijacked’: Activists Slam Plan For Convention | TPMMuckraker.

Teabagging Asshats

How do you take a spontaneously erupting grassroots phenomenon fueled by rebel anti-government rage, and mold it into a coherent political movement?

Not very easily, it turns out. That much is becoming clear, as 600 members of disparate groups from across the country prepare to descend next month on Nashville for the first National Tea Party Convention. The group’s big coming-out party is threatened by a rash of infighting, finger-pointing and paranoia.

“We would strongly oppose any person or organization becoming the movement,” says Adam Brandon, press secretary for FreedomWorks.

The stars of the movement, such as they are, will be out: Going Rogue author, former GOP vice-presidential nominee, and newly minted Fox News contributor Sarah Palin; Minnesota GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann; and prominent birther Joseph Farah, the editor of WorldNetDaily, among them. But a number of Tea Party activists recoil at the very idea that their movement should have stars—and are steering clear because they don’t want to follow any one leader. And FreedomWorks, the nonprofit headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey—and the group that helped foster the early growth and development of the Tea Party insurgency—has decided to stay away.

The Tea Party Splatters – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.