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Tea Party with Palin and My 7th Grade Girlfriend

By David Paul Kuhn, February 5, 2010
David Paul Kuhn is the Chief Political Correspondent for RealClearPolitics and the author of The Neglected Voter.

I logged onto Facebook to read Sarah Palin's latest posts. Thursday morning she had 1,260,892 fans. Facebook randomly features six fans or friends on someone's page. One of the six fans featured that morning was, by chance, my 7th grade girlfriend.

Palin has gotten some heat for headlining the National Tea Party Convention, underway this weekend in Nashville. The convention costs $549 to attend or $349 for only the lobster-and-steak banquet. Palin will give the keynote address at the banquet. Her speaking fee: $100,000. Critics, including some conservatives, saw the costs as unbefitting a people's movement.

Palin wrote that the "compensation for my appearance will go right back to the cause." I decided to write my 7th grade girlfriend to ask her thoughts. We had spoken once in about 15 years, at my high school reunion. She replied that she would be very pleased to catch up and "discuss S.P."

Andrea Sanfilippo-Desrude lives in Milwaukee and is the mother of three young children. She has liked Palin since day one.

"She is a strong woman and I think people are quite intimidated by her and really really hard on her. And I think they should evaluate Obama like they do her," Andrea said. "Sarah says it like it is. It doesn't feel like she is afraid of people. She has a family, I think five children and a lot of people can relate to her – people like me, conservative stay at home moms." (Emphasis added)

Andrea recalled outing herself as a Palin fan on Facebook. It showed up on her status update, available to all her friends.

"I got a lot of comments," Andrea said. "Someone wrote, 'WTF Andrea!' And I got a lot of, 'Oh' Andrea.'"

I filled Andrea in on the Tea Party controversy and Palin's fee. Andrea paused, seemingly uncomfortable with the sum. But then I told her Palin was going to reinvest it in her cause.

"Oh, then it's ok," Andrea replied. "People really scrutinize every little move she makes. And I think if it was someone else doing that, I don't think it would be looked at so much."

Andrea is correct, of course. But this convention and headliner also have internal headaches to endure. Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.) pulled out, citing potential conflicts with House ethics rules.

Some leading Tea Party activists also declined to attend. Philip Glass, the director of the National Precinct Alliance, said in a statement his group was "concerned" by the potential "exploitation of the grass-roots movement." (Emphasis added)

The walk-up to the convention did feel somewhat corporate. This tea party revolution brought to you by Lipton (joke). But one convention sponsor is a Madison Avenue based website called Tea Party Emporium. At the emporium one can purchase an $89.99 sterling silver and quartz crystal tea bag lapel-pin to "flaunt your patriotism in fashion!"

It was not Glass' sort of Tea Party. "The majority of the people in this movement cannot even afford those tickets," Glass told me, adding that he still wished the organizers well. Glass' group aims to fill local political posts with "constitutional conservatives." (Emphasis added)

"My only question about the convention now," Glass said, "is what will the people do when they leave that convention?" (Emphasis added)

The Republican establishment hopes they will continue to help unseat Democrats. The GOP has attempted to cautiously attach itself to this movement's momentum. And to borrow from a Tucker Carlson insight, the Republican Party wins as long as they are generally heading in the same direction as the tea party activists.

And it's fitting that Palin is speaking at the first Tea Party convention. Palin has never been a favorite of the GOP establishment. Republican grey beards, like the Tea Party movement, have walked cautiously around the woman whose book dominates the best-seller lists and who can summon more than a million Facebook fans. (Emphasis added)

Palin and the Tea Party protests are also united by what is united against them: the liberal base. But like the wave that helped bring Barack Obama to the White House, this too is a people's movement. It might not be liberals' people. But it's grassroots activism that has now combined the second biggest political rock star with the hottest movement in American politics. That gets mainstream conservative voters, like my 7th grade girlfriend, to pay attention. This Tea Party might only be getting started. (Emphasis added)

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The Tea Party movement seems to have become the conservative movement.

The convention sounds like a very expensive gala affair... like a Corporate annual get-together.