Tea Party Convention in Nashville to allow streaming Webcast and broadcast in response to critics
This weekend’s Tea Party Convention in Nashville, under criticism that high ticket prices are preventing true grassroots activists from attending, made a surprise announcement late Sunday night that the convention will be televised.
Tea Party Nation, the group sponsoring the event that starts Thursday, said it is working with internet media company PJTV, FOX News, CNN and Reuters TV to “allow the millions of Tea Party activists who could not be in attendance to view many of the proceedings live along with special interviews of delegates and speakers alike.”
Viewing times will be published on the National Tea Party Convention Web site, organizers said. Airings will include the live broadcast of the convention’s opening, keynote speeches during the conference and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin address, which reportedly cost the group $100,000.
The full ticket price — which does not include airfare or hotel accommodations at the Opryland Hotel — is $549 plus a $9.95 online booking fee.
While passes granting access to the full convention are sold out, the group is selling tickets to Palin’s address only for $349 on its Web site.
Organizers say the convention will feature well known speakers, workshops, seminars, information centers and organizational tools for leaders to take back to their respective local Tea Party organizations.
But Tea Party Nation founders Judson and Sherry Phillips have taken heat from those who say they are profiting from the convention and are trying to establish themselves as the leaders of the movement that has been defined so far by its resistance to any centralized leadership.
Nashville newspaper the Tennessean wrote that critics of the event fear it could ruin the movement with its emphasis on transforming the Tea Party from a grassroots uprising into a top-down organization.
A number of Tea Party groups and public officials have distanced themselves from the convention. Last week Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, both Republicans, canceled their scheduled appearances.
Judson Phillips, president of Tea Party Nation, acknowledged the controversy surrounding the event, saying the group and “my family have taken much criticism over the weeks preceding the convention.”
While working out the logistics to airing the convention, Phillips said the group has kept the “plans close to the vest.”
“Obviously, we believe that the delegates and banquet attendees are going to enjoy the networking and the excitement of being here directly. However, as we are all committed to grassroots activism, we wanted to share this event with those who could not come to Nashville,” he said.
Mark A. Skoda, founder of the the Memphis Tea Party and convention spokesman, also recognized the surprise element of the announcement.
“With our team effort and the many friends we had in the new media, we planned this surprise. We are hopeful that these millions of activists will participate with the local delegates through technology. As my father always said, you keep your powder dry until there’s something to shoot at,” he said.
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This article is a bunch of false garbage! Sarah Palin is NOT CHARGING THE TEA PARTY CONVENTION $100,000. FOR HER SPEECH! She is not charging them one dime! The author needs to get his facts straight or stop trying to pawn himself off as a ligitimate “journalist.” Bogus nutball!
I love Sarah Palin…She can upset the far left like no one I know and that makes her GREAT!….She makes the liberal left show their inner selves…Angry, Narcissistic, Money Grubbing elitists..Next time you are confronted by a Sarah Hater have them explain why? LOL you will see a real struggle and a far far reach to find an excuse. Pathetic at best.
I can tell you why I dislike Sarah Palin and this is coming from a hardcore libertarian that hates liberals. She makes those who consider themselves conservatives appear stupid. She claims people like Katie Couric “Tricked her with their interviews” even though it was something anyone could answer. She claims she reads and yet cannot name one paper or any publication period that she subsrcibes to. How about the fact that she goes to small towns and says they are the “Real America”? That sort of thinking of singling out a sect of society and calling them the real America is barbaric thinking. We are all Americans. She is a female George Bush and anyone who is a conservative knows he was nothing like a conservative. Lets not forget she also quit her office because things got to tough for her. I hate Hillary Clinton but she took a pounding from the press as bad as Sarah Palin has and she never quit. The conservative need a real face for their movement and I cannot think of anyone worse for it than Sarah Palin.
…not sure where you’re getting your information, but you’ve seem to have gotten your facts wrong. Like her or dislike but let’s at least try to be accurate.
I never heard Sarah Palin claim that Katie Couric tricked her. I’ve heard 2 interviews now where Sarah Palin admits “What do you read?” was a fair question and that it was her own fault for not answering better and allowing herself to be annoyed and unprofessional. She has since answered the question as to what she reads regularly–Newsmax, some paper in Alaska (can’t remember the name) and the Wall Street Journal.
I don’t know how you can even say she is nothing like a conservative when you look at her record as a mayor and governor. She has cut taxes, cut spending, streamlined government.
I actually like Hillary Clinton and agree the press was unfair to her like they were to Sarah Palin, but when you say Hillary Clinton didn’t quit, I have to ask, didn’t quit what? Are you comparing Hillary’s Presidential compaign to Sarah Palin’s time as governor after the election? Those are two completely different things. Hillary didn’t have 20 frivolous law suits filled against her that put her family on the path to bankruptcy, made her staff plan to quit because they were spending all their time xeroxing fake FOIA requests that were nothing more than fishing operations to find more things to sue Sarah Palin about. Sarah Palin could see these lawsuits were not going to stop and would take up all her time and her staffs’ time and they wouldn’t be able to get any work done for Alaska. She cared more about what was best for Alaska than her own political career and knew people like you would hold it against her, but did the right thing anyway.
First of all she did say she was tricked. In an interview with Barbara Walters she said that Obama would have been tricked too if the media would have been covering him like they did her. Im not just saying these things, they are facts regardless on whether or not you want to hide from them. Now I paraphrased for the sake of the reader but if you want to play semantics I can send you a link to where you can find these things clear as black and white. And by the way listing what you read a year after you were first asked the question strikes me as idiotic and a political move. And if you honestly think she quit her office for Alaska’s sake I have nothing for you that will convince you because you already drank the kool aid. And no she is not conservative just because she cuts taxes and spending doesnt make her conservative. Liberals have done that too. For one thing supporting both of these wars we are in is not conservative. Check back and see what a conservative used to mean and what it means now that George Bush hijacked the term. And I guess you forgot before Hillary ran for president she was a Senator in New York. How can the American people hate government and its officials so much and love a woman who’s every move has been purely political right up to the point where she signed a lucrative deal with fox.
Like I said..its a struggle and a huge reach to explain and REAL reason for hating an Honest, Hard Working Person that loves her country and an Accomplished woman. what is there to hate? The profound, unwarranted, disgusting, sexist attacks on her make me embarrassed that Americans can be so ugly and partisan, we will even attack a politicians under age children. its unbelievable the hatred this woman has faced.
BTW, does this ‘TEA’ party deal have anything to do with the marijuana question brought up with the president? I mean, is the ‘TEA’ party a new religion, with grass involved in the sacraments? Do they pray in ‘Smoke Lodges’, throwing weed on hot rocks? Do they sip Cristal or some other fine wine, given to the by the ‘HEAD’ priests, as they toke, and munch their cookies? Lemme know, this might be my kinda deal.
Sign up for food stamps if you are looking for a job as a comic writer.
The Tea Partiers sure have enough Mad Hatters amongst them. If they just had a big bunny-rabbit, they could dig a big hole and go underground. Wouldn’t that be a relief!?
the president,the senate,congress and the media all ridiculed the tea party movement so you are in good company.unfortunately for you all the ridicule has no effect on the movement and probably even helps it.it’s comical to listen to people dismiss something that was powerful enough to stop a super majority on its biggest proposals,then end the super majority in massachusettes, of all places.theres more to come you don’t have to tune in to the tennessee event,the one in november will be nation wide!
The Mass. teabagger ‘victory’ had a lot to do with the fact that the Massers already have a health program like the one up in the Congress, and didn’t want the Fed effing-up their good deal. So that ‘victory’ prevented, temporarily, the rest of the nation enjoying what the Massers already have. I admit, I don’t know much about the Tea Party, except that like everything else on the current political scene, it’s fun to make fun of. Were I to learn that it incorporated the same principles as the Original Tea Party, in Bawstun, and had some firm, usable ideas for straightening-out the ‘god’-awful-mess the so-called ‘conservative’ NeoConZionist Cabal left US in, I’d become a Tea Partier in a Las Vegas minute. Straight, a touch of honeys, a coupla’ cookies, and a pot to pee in when I’m done, please.
The fact-checkers assigned to Palin’s speech have already completed their forms, graded her at ‘Zero’, and are relaxing at Barney’s Pub, secure in their analyses, based on all historical evidence.
~Continue to laugh at us and YOU will continue to pay……ask Coakely, Corzine or Deeds.
http://bit.ly/JudgementDay
Here comes America..like it or not! We are here to take our country back from the liberal wackos