ABC News Alvin Greene, hero, scam , or Tea Party to the extreme? Examiner.com Mr. Greene is an unemployed former veteran who filed to run in the race with a $10400 check in March. Now, there are questions where the check came from, … Democrat calls for investigation of SC election msnbc.com all 635 news articles

BBC News More on the Fox-pushed Tea Party Express scam Media Matters for America (blog) I cannot count the number of times during our most recent presidential election I heard or read John McCain labeled as such, yet a quick check of his voting … Poll: Most Tea Party Supporters Say Their Taxes Are Fair CBS News all 1,067 news articles

TEA Party Movement Jamestown Post Journal … Palin's intent was to embarrass the president – but they all failed miserably, as did the entire scam . She has ''promised to return'' the $100000 check . … and more

Rep. Mark Kirk’s (R-Ill.) successful Illinois Senate primary campaign against a truly weak field of GOP candidates is being interpreted as a blow to the “Tea Party movement.” I don’t think it is — it’s clear that Kirk headed off conservative anger by flip-flopping on cap-and-trade (he voted for it then spoke out against it) and swinging hard to the right, loudly asking for an endorsement from Sarah Palin. The minor embarrassment for Tea Partiers was the campaign of Adam Andrzejewski, a first-time politician who spoke at an April 15, 2009 Tea Party and sold himself, explicitly, as that movement’s candidate. In the final week of the campaign, he got the same sort of full-court-press boost from online conservatives that Scott Brown did in Massachusetts. RedState claimed that Andrzejewski’s internal polling showed him 2 points down, in striking distance for the win. Gateway Pundit, among other bloggers, scorched the media for not covering Andrzejewski’s 11th-hour endorsement from former Polish president Lech Walesa . On election night, HotAir illustrated its Illinois primary thread with a picture of Andrzejewski, making it clear that he was the movement’s candidate. Andrzejewski wound up in fifth place out of seven candidates, with 14.4 percent of the vote. Somehow, Illinois voters were able to resist this.

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Adam Andrzejewski, No Longer the ‘Next Scott Brown’

Republican candidate Allen West , an Iraq war veteran who has caught the attention of multiple conservative and Tea Party groups, for the last quarter outraised the House incumbent he hopes to unseat in November: fundraising powerhouse Ron Klein (D-Fla.). West reported $677,586 raised from Oct. through Dec., and Klein reported $330,140 raised in the same period, according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings. When Klein first ran for Congress in 2006, his successful campaign against Republican Rep. Clay Shaw was one of the most expensive congressional races of the year. In the 2008 cycle, Klein raised nearly $4 million for reelection in his Boca Raton-area district. West was the GOP nominee in 2008, but he was defeated by Klein 55 to 45 percent. Klein still boasts more money raised overall and more cash on hand than West. West raised $1,221,394 total and was left with $707,150 after expenses. Klein raised $1,402,192 total and reported $2,370,674 on hand as of Dec. 31.

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Tea Party Candidate Allen West Outraised Florida Incumbent

The governor-turned-Fox News pundit tells Greta Van Susteren that she’s still headlining the embattled National Tea Party Convention next week. Oh, you betcha I’m going to be there. 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. I won’t personally gain from being there. The speaker’s fee will go right back into the cause. I’ll be able to donate it 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. Palin doesn’t have the out that Michele Bachmann and Martha Blackburn had–as a former office-holder, she has no lobbying/ethics hurdles to jump over. The unfolding drama and scandal of this convention, though, make her decision to attend it while bitterly blowing off CPAC seem less and less astute.

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Palin, Still Tea Partying

One quick thing that I didn’t mention in today’s piece about a training session and media meet-and-greet that FreedomWorks held for Tea Party activists was the presence of Richard Pollock , the Washington, D.C., editor of Pajamas Media. The conservative media company and its PJTV channel were early, unheralded promoters of the first wave of Tea Parties , a tradition that Pollock said he wanted to uphold. “I want to say something you won’t hear the mainstream media say,” said Pollock. “I’m so honored to be in your presence. I’m privileged to be with you. And we want to know what you guys are doing. If you have something that you want PJTV to know about, let us know.”

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Pajamas TV and the Tea Parties

The North Decoder blog unearths some fascinating writing from current Gov. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), then the president of the state-owned Bank of North Dakota and a proud member of the … Democratic Party. From a letter he wrote to newspapers in 1996: I have always been moderate in my political views, but now that I am considering elective office, I realize I must join a political party and stick to it. I have decided to join the Democratic-NPL Party because I believe that is the best fit for my views. What people don’t want is partisan politics as usual.  The effort by overly partisan members of the Republican Party to cast me as one of their own is just that, partisan politics as usual. Four years later, Hoeven was elected governor as a Republican; now, he’s the party’s candidate for an open Senate seat. Hoeven wasn’t the only promising Midwestern politician to switch to a GOP that was, at the time, growing wildly in his state. The year that Hoeven wrote this letter, St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman switched from the Democratic Party to the GOP.

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John Hoeven, Democrat

Mixed messages coming today from Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader who is spinning last week’s GOP Senate win in Massachusetts as a repudiation of the Democratic majority, while at the same time conceding that voters don’t really trust anyone in Congress at the moment. “I do think they’re angry,” Boehner said of voters on “Fox and Friends” this morning. “They’re angry about the economy and jobs. They don’t trust either party.” Boehner went on to claim that Republicans have offered clear alternatives to the Democrats’ stimulus bill, health care reform and “all of their nonsense.” (Remember, for example, this little gem outlining the GOP’s plans for health reform.) Still, his concession that Americans are across-the-board angry is indication that Republican leaders, for all their gloating over the last week, are also worried that the voters in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey were revolting, not merely against Democrats, but against incumbency. Also, if the Republicans are to make real gains, they’ll have to come up with a better message than that uttered by Rep. Adam Putnam (R-Fla.) last week. “The American people have fallen out of love with the current direction, but they haven’t fallen in love with Republicans,” Putnam told The Washington Post. ”Last year was about picking up ourselves and dusting ourselves off. Now we need a direction and vision.” Which begs the question: If you don’t already have direction or vision, what are you doing on Capitol Hill?

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Boehner: Voters ‘Don’t Trust Either Party’

The upshot of the news that Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden–son of the vice president–won’t run for the state’s open Senate seat is that Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) is now prohibitively likely to take the seat over for Republicans. Delaware Democrats, who have dominated the state for the better part of a decade, have a bench of second-tier candidates to draw on. But Castle, who’s held statewide office in Delaware since the 1980s, is the most popular politician in the state. And Biden’s pass on the race will be national news, an indication that Democrats are panicking about bad polls and bad economic numbers and don’t want to stake their careers on the whims of 2010 midterm voters. A secondary effect of Biden’s decision may come when Tea Party activists–they’ve got a strong presence in Delaware–take a second look at Castle and decide whether it’s worth backing a primary challenger to protest his vote for cap-and-trade legislation. GOP activist Christine O’Donnell had been considering a race; with the stakes considerably lowered, expect to hear more about a possible challenge there.

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Beau Biden Out; Republicans Look Set to Take Delaware Senate Seat

BOSTON — At his morning press conference, Senator-elect Scott Brown (R-Mass.) seemed more miffed than flattered by a question about whether he had “presidential timber.” He apologized for being tired, and meant no disrespect, but it was a “silly question.” Nonetheless, Max Fisher is collating the Brown-for-president talk on the web, which starts with Matt Drudge, who has had a “will he run for president” headline leading his site for around 15 hours. From my vantage point, it’s cute but ridiculous. If voter anger at the Democrats has taught us anything, it’s that a superstar can fall very fast, and Brown has perhaps the least-examined record of anyone elected to the Senate in modern times. How many Republicans are aware, as he reminded reporters today, that Brown voted for the Massachusetts health care plan? Still Brown’s rise as a positively adored GOP superstar is going to scramble the alignment of power and influence in the party. It’s not yet clear how it will happen. But watching Fox News’ re-runs of election coverage last night, and watching Sarah Palin literally phone in comments about a campaign she had nothing to do with, seemed significant.

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The Brown-for-President Boomlet

BOSTON — At his first press conference as senator-elect from Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown hued pretty closely to the rhetoric of his campaign and welcomed questions about what his win meant for the future of the GOP. And asked what parts of health care reform he wanted to pass this year, Brown spoke vaguely about the value of expanded coverage while saying it should be left to the states. “Let the states tell the federal government, hey, this is what we’d like to do,” said Brown. “Just so we’re past campaign mode, I think it’s important for everyone to get some form of health care, so to offer a basic plan for everybody I think is important.” He pointed out that he’d voted for this state’s health care mandate, but he saw his role “as the 41st senator” to bring the reform bill “back to the drawing board.” After Fox News’s Carl Cameron asked what side of the GOP’s ideological tussle he’d take as the party’s “poster boy,” Brown mused about working between party lines and blowing off Washington chatter. “Maybe there’s a new breed of Republican coming to Washington,” Brown said. “I hear all these discussions about someone who said this, or someone who wrote this in their book. My response is: Who cares? We have terrorists trying to blow us up in Afghanistan.” Brown quickly dealt with, and brushed aside, questions about when he might be seated. He’d filed the requisite paperwork with the secretary of state, was confident that absentee ballots would not diminish the margin of victory to the point where it was in question, and would pay a courtesy call to senators tomorrow. Brown was vague on what he’d do when he got to the Senate, suggesting that he could “offer guidance as to what we’ve done here in Massachusetts” and work across party lines. The only clear sign he gave of his other intentions was a warning about some expiring Bush tax cuts–he wanted to save them.

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Brown: ‘It’s Important for Everyone to Get Some Form of Health Care’

Kate Zernike has written a fascinating piece on the bare-knuckled political activism of the National Precinct Alliance, formed to make sure party committees were no longer able to nominate candidates that were insufficiently conservative and loyal to the base. There’s some focus on Nevada, a state that had a floundering and failing Republican Party infrastructure in 2008, but where Republicans are champing at the bit for 2010. Advocates hold up the example of Las Vegas, where a group of about 30 people who had become friendly at Tea Party events last spring met to discuss how they could turn their crowds into political influence. One mentioned that there were about 500 open precinct committee positions in the local Republican Party. They recruited other activists and flooded the committee — the Republican Party says it now has 780 committee people, up from about 300. In July, they approved a new executive committee, and Tony Warren, one of the organizers and a new precinct committeeman himself, said six out of seven executives are “constitutional conservatives,” in keeping with Tea Party ideology. With the bulk of Nevada’s population in the Las Vegas area, the local committee was able to elect a conservative slate to the state party in December, including a state chairman who has said he wants to make the party “safe” for conservatives. When I was in Nevada two years ago, libertarian-minded Ron Paul activists were furious at their treatment from the state GOP–despite coming second (ahead of John McCain) in the state caucuses, they were basically shut out of influencing the convention. That’s certainly changed.

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‘No More NY-23s’

After I wrote my story this morning on the National Tea Party Convention and the troubles the movement’s been having as it moves into the political big time, I received more reports of troubled Tea Party events. According to Big Chief Entertainment, LLC, some conservative donors wanted to put together their own event in Louisiana on Feb. 4, around the same time as the convention in Nashville. “My company was contacted in November by a group in Louisiana that wanted us to produce a Palin and also Beck show in the Cajundome in Lafayette, La.,” said Bob Vernon of Big Chief Entertainment. “We had it on hold and the seating layout was for 12,000 people. $100 a head on the floor and $50 a head in the bleachers. We busted our butts to get it all done for them. When it came down to time for them to pay Palin’s $100,000 fee, they backed out and told us there wasn’t enough profit in the venture for them. I thought they were kidding … they would have pulled in around $500,000 NET for the one evening event.” Vernon was still bitter about the experience. “The best part was these idiots that had the money to invest were filthy, repeat, FILTHY rich conservatives in South Louisiana who claimed at the start they didn’t care if they made any money or not they just wanted the citizens down there to hear the ‘conservative message.’” Another event, a National Conservative Symposium that would have been held in San Antonio on Jan 22-24, has collapsed for more specific financial reasons. From their Website: Due to circumstances beyond the control of Tea Party Support, we were forced to cancel the National Conservative Symposium. Our former event planner, Jennifer Ramirez-Jasiczek, diverted ticket sales to her Paypal account.  We have contacted Paypal and they will be refunding those of you that were affected by this. If your receipt shows payment to boutique@regalaffair.com or ANY other address with the regalaffair.com domain or A Regal Affair please contact Paypal and file a dispute.

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Fees, Infighting, Capsize More Tea Party Events

Late last year, Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation came to Eric Odom with a proposition. Odom’s group, the American Liberty Alliance–a free market, anti-tax group launched in March 2009, after its leaders had helped put together the first Tea Party protests–could sign on with the National Tea Party Convention that Phillips was organizing. ALA could promote the convention on its website and to its members. In return, it would become a “gold co-sponsor” of the convention, which would cost any other sponsor $5,000. That status would let Odom join other activists backstage with Sarah Palin, the event’s big-ticket speaker, before she gave her Saturday evening address. Odom signed up, and ALA joined the conservative women’s group Smart Girl Politics as the most prominent Tea Party groups promoting the event. On January 12, Odom had to rethink his position. In the morning, he tried to convince local leaders of ALA that, despite some bad press coverage, the event was worth supporting. But at 2 p.m., Nashville-based Tea Party activist Kevin Smith posted a 6,700-word article on the “story behind Tea Party Nation’s dishonest beginnings.” In Smith’s account, Tea Party Nation had become a scam, promoting its own welfare while alienating local grassroots activists. The high cost of the convention–full-access tickets were $549, while access to Palin’s speech alone was $349. “It’s become clear to me that Judson and his for-profit Tea Party Nation Corporation are at the forefront of the GOP’s process of hijacking the tea party movement,” Smith wrote. “How can I honestly object to this same behavior in my Government and demand they clean up Washington when I am unwilling to risk the personal and political injury it takes to expose the fraud, corruption, and deceit to which I am privy?” Smith’s attack on Tea Party Nation jumped from e-mail inbox to e-mail inbox. Hours later, 25 of ALA’s organizers told Odom that they wanted to pull out of the convention. Shortly after midnight, Odom announced that that ALA was quitting the convention because “when we look at the $500 price tag for the event and the fact that many of the original leaders in the group left over similar issues, it’s hard for us not to assume the worst.” Since the first announcements about the National Tea Party Convention in November 2009, the high-priced, first-of-its kind event has been a magnet for controversy, a divisive subject within the burgeoning movement, and a punching bag for local and national media. Those three factors have complemented one another, as angry activists like Smith, Florida organizer Robin Stublen, and California organizer Mark Meckler have attacked the convention in very public forums. The attacks have remained one-sided as Phillips has blown off questions about the criticism. He has not responded to multiple phone calls and e-mails from TWI and from other outlets such as TPM Muckraker . Asked to confirm that Palin was being paid $100,000 to appear at the event, Phillips only told Politico that its reporters’ sources were “not reliable.” The result: A steady stream of negative press that has been circulated inside the movement, culminating in the high-profile withdrawal of ALA. “I think it is a great con of people making money off the passions of others,” said Erick Erickson, the editor of RedState.com and sponsor of the biannual RedState Gathering convention, in an e-mail to TWI. “A $500+ per person fee to a for-profit organization run by people most people have never heard of is neither populist nor accessible for many tea party activists. It smells more like a scam using Sarah Palin to build legitimacy while lining pockets with money from hard working tea party activists.” After talking to TWI, Erickson put up a blog post making the argument in even more detail. “When I’ve talked to our members, they’ve said this is entirely too expensive,” said Jenny Beth Martin, the national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. The decision not to participate was made in a December conference call with members. “I’m sure there are other people in the movement who haven’t given as much, haven’t been organizing events, and may feel more comfortable spending that money, going to see some speakers, and getting that training. But we’re focusing on a grassroots response to the State of the Union and on the next round of Tea Parties on February 27.” But as humiliating as the National Tea Party Convention’s coverage has been for activists, critics and attendees alike see the ambition and political strategy of their movement becoming more and more mainstream. Nine months ago, Odom got national headlines for pre-emptively denying RNC Chairman Michael Steele a speaking slot at the Chicago Tea Party. “We prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in government as well as political parties,” he said at the time. Today, Steele is winning a Tea Party Nation web poll on whether he should speak the convention, and Odom is gearing up for a trip to Massachusetts to help the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, take the state’s open Senate seat. The Tea Party Express, an operation of the GOP-supporting Our Country Deserves Better PAC which has been utterly rejected by some Tea Party activists, is rolling into the convention and catching hardly any flack for it. The presence of Palin, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) at the convention is seen, universally, as a coup with import that will outlive the controversy over the event itself. “Having Palin speak at the convention works to to their mutual advantage,” said Morton Blackwell, the president of the Leadership Institute, an organization that trains conservatives (program veterans include James O’Keefe, the videographer who taped damaging exposes of ACORN) and is getting a discounted sponsorship at the National Tea Party Convention in return for holding free sessions. “It’ll help them get thousands of people there, I think. And the leadership of the Tea Parties, that I’ve talked to, do not believe that they should start their own party.” Despite the negative press Palin has received for demanding so much money for her speech, there’s agreement that her presence will help convince activists that they need to work for Republicans. “Palin is actually more Tea Party than Republican Party, anyway–she walked away from the governor’s office, for crying out loud!” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform–which is still undecided on whether to support the convention, based on conflicting suggestions from local activists. “But it’s important that they realize that they don’t have to be friends with the guys they replace the Democrats with. They get them to run on their issues. That’s how you avoid third party movements.” Some of the people planning to attend the convention are still considering whether third party challenges to the Democrats and the GOP are viable. David DeGerolamo of NC Freedom, who is spending “thousands of dollars” to travel from North Carolina to Nashville and run a breakout session on consolidating state Tea Party groups at the convention, speculated that it would be an ideal place to “weed out” people who had the money to challenge the two parties. “I’ll tell you,” said DeGerolamo, “the GOP here in North Carolina is scared to death about what will happen at the Tea Party Convention.” But the chance of the Tea Party Convention becoming the start of a third party movement — something rumored for months and occasionally indulged by Palin — is remote. (On the January 13 episode of “Glenn Beck,” Palin admitted that “there are times that I have been tempted to bail from” the GOP but that she didn’t think third parties are viable.) The focus of detractors is on purifying the movement of buck-raking, but not Republican activism. The focus of convention defenders is While Kevin Smith’s explosive blog post warned against GOP exploitation, hours later the Louisiana Tea Party endorsed Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) for re-election. “Sometimes, in conservative circles, you run into this purity test problem where any traction in political process is seen as selling out over principled,” said John O’Hara, a staffer at the libertarian Heartland Institute who helped organized the February 27 Tea Party in Washington, D.C. and whose book “New American Tea Party” hit shelves this week. “I’d hate to see the Tea Party relegated to a third party spoiler, and luckily I don’t think that’s happening.” Neither Tea Party activists nor conservative movement figures who are linking up with them express much worry about the bad press the convention is getting. Some of the non-participants who’ve been quoted criticizing the convention, such as Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, are fine with the media promoting the crusade of Odom, Stublen, and others while Brandon’s group quietly promotes its new PAC targeting vulnerable Democrats. “We wish them all the best, but we are too stretched on the health care bill,” Brandon told TWI. And for all the bad press Tea Party Nation’s received, the very day the group announced extremely limited access for the media, its website revealed one profitable reason why. “The First National Tea Party Convention is officially SOLD OUT!!!! You may place your name on the waiting list in the event additional tickets become available.”

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Tea Party Convention Drama Fueled by Emerging GOP Alliance

Last year, the Conservative Political Action Conference closed with a speech from Rush Limbaugh. This year, according to CPAC director Lisa De Pasquale , it will close with a speech from Glenn Beck–who really became a national leader of some importance last year, if you talk to Tea Party activists. As I noted last week when Sarah Palin passed on the conference, CPAC doesn’t pay its speaker, so Beck is waiving a considerable fee.

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Glenn Beck to Speak at CPAC

Erick Erickson (whom, full disclosure, I’d asked about the story earlier today) posts a scorching attack on next month’s Tea Party Convention in Nashville, which has been attracting some flack for its high cost (minimum ticket price, $349) and rumors of huge speaker fees. Comparing the event to a Nigerian scam email, Erickson frets that “the tea party movement has largely descended into ego and quest for purpose for individuals at the expense of what the tea party movement started out to be.” And he says Sarah Palin is making a mistake by giving a speech that cost organizers a rumored $100,000. Sarah Palin is certainly giving the National Tea Party Convention legitimacy. But at what cost? I am fearful this thing will blow up and harm her. I am more fearful that a bunch of well meaning people from across the nation are going to show up, expect more, and then grow disaffected or burn out when the deliverables they expect do not come in. I hope I am wrong about all of this. I could be. But something tells me I am right. And because no one else will say it, I will — I think Sarah Palin got some bad advice and probably should have done more due diligence.

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RedState: Palin Might Be ‘Ruining’ Herself By Attending Tea Party Convention

One of the ironies of the Republican assault on Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is the demand that the Democratic leader be held to the same standard as Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.)–and the Lott flap is not something that Republicans really benefit from revisiting. To wit, African-American former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell takes to Politico to make the case that Lott wasn’t that offensive, really. Harry Reid’s comments were offensive and, if anything, worse than those that got Lott ousted from the Senate leadership in 2002. What Lott said then was the country would have been better off if 100-year-old Strom Thurmond had been elected president. Lott probably did not know — although he quickly found out — that Thurmond in 1948 ran for president as a so-called states rights candidate and that his platform had only one plank: racial segregation. Trent Lott was all of 7 when old Thurmond campaigned as a segregationist. This explanation really beggars belief. Even if Lott didn’t know the Dixiecrat platform by heart, he was 23 years old when Thurmond left the Democratic Party and joined the GOP in protest over Civil Rights legislation. He had served with Thurmond in the Senate for 14 years by the time he made these remarks. He had mused about a Thurmond presidency in the past. And Blackwell’s stance here is baffling because he was one of the first Republicans to demand Lott’s resignation back in 2002. From the December 17, 2002 edition of the Columbus Dispatch, via Lexis-Nexis: “I think if he truly loves the party, he would step down,” Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell said. Blackwell said he had “conveyed my disappointment in both Senator Lott’s comments and his leadership” to Ohio’s senators as well as other national political leaders in Washington. Ohio Sens. Mike DeWine and George V. Voinovich, both Republicans, have condemned Lott’s comments, but neither has called for his resignation.  Lott’s comments were “morally reprehensible (and) politically counterproductive to those of us who have tried to broaden the base” of the Republican Party, Blackwell said.

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Ken Blackwell: Maybe Trent Lott Didn’t Know That Strom Thurmond Was a Segregationist

Zach Roth catches Dale Robertson, the would-be Tea Party leader who has been ostracized for the photo of him holding a sign calling taxpayers the “n-word,” photoshopping the infamous picture on his Website . I have no idea whom this is supposed to convince.

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‘Work 4 U’

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If you believe in the primacy of the news cycle, this has been a lousy week for RNC Chairman Michael Steele. He’s booked on “Face the Nation” this Sunday, and the questions may focus less on good news for his party, like the retirement of Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), than this bizarre string of events: – Steele embarked on a publicity blitz for his new political book — a book whose writing, apparently, was not common knowledge inside the RNC. – During the PR blitz, Steele badmouthed the GOP’s readiness to lead after the next elections, prompting a backlash from Hill staffers. – Also during the PR blitz, Steele mysteriously argued that he “didn’t seek” the RNC job. No one knew what he was talking about. – Steele abruptly canceled an appearance on ABC’s web-only “Top Line” show, and the party gave “an emergency meeting” as the reason, prompting a good hour of speculation that he was on the way out. To put this in context: On January 19, Massachusetts will hold a special election for the U.S. Senate. Conservative activists are increasingly excited about their chances. If (as expected) GOP candidate Scott Brown loses a fairly close race, what are conservative activists going to think about an RNC that, staying cautious, didn’t invest in the campaign — while its chairman was promoting a book?

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A Michael Steele Mystery Roundup

Via Ben Smith , it seems meaningful that Sarah Palin’s camp explained her decision not to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference with two unprovoked attacks on the American Conservative Union. The first is on a micro-scandal over ACU Chairman David Keene’s advocacy for FedEx . The second, less convincing attack is on CPAC for letting the John Birch Society co-sponsor the event. As I’ve reported, the conspiracy site WorldNetDaily , which posts content far to the right even of JBS’s content, is heavily involved in the Tea Party Convention that Palin is being paid some sum of money to speak at. The news that Palin is speaking at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, however, protects her from a little of the criticism that she’s skipping established political events because they won’t pay her. The SRLC conference doesn’t pay its speakers and is seen as must-attend run-up to the presidential primaries.

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Palin Goes After CPAC, Sticks With SRLC

I was surprised that Sarah Palin, who has twice passed on chances to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, agreed to keynote the National Tea Party Convention. Undoubtedly the Tea Party event has more to offer her financially–tickets for her speech, as I reported last month, are selling for $349 . But while CPAC is a well-established event with a filter for extremism, the Tea Party event is an unknown quantity. And right on cue, the conspiracy-minded site WorldNetDaily is joining the program , with Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah getting a plum Friday night speaking slot. To be asked to speak at the first national tea party convention is a great honor for me. I believe the tea party movement is a powerful and righteous social and political force that can help take America back from the grips of out-of-control and tyrannical central government. It’s also a personal privilege for me to be on the same bill with Gov. Sarah Palin and so many other distinguished leaders and friends such as Judge Roy Moore, Rep. Michele Bachmann and Phil Valentine. Two months ago Farah appeared on the same stage as Bachmann and other conservative House Republicans to promote WND’s “pink slip” campaign against Congress, and political reporters pretty much ignored it. And WND has sponsored CPAC in the past. But CPAC has explicitly ruled out a “birther” forum at this year’s event, and some Republican activists have called for conservatives to cut ties with the birth certificate and conspiracy-obsessed WND. And here you’ll have Sarah Palin, giving her first political speech in months, on the same stage as Joseph Farah.

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WorldNetDaily and Palin, Together At Last

If Republicans have a good year in 2010, they’ll take out plenty of Democrats in swing seats. If they have a great year, they may defeat senior Democrats such as Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.), the 40-year incumbent who runs the Appropriations Committee. Candidate Duffy, who gained celebrity on “The Real World” but has built a real political constituency back in his district, is running explicitly against Obey’s power and influence. A referendum on the Democrats’ economic program — whether voters see it working and worth giving a chance, or whether they want to oust the party for failing — will be in races such as Duffy’s. Next — 2. Tim Pawlenty

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3. Sean Duffy

Aaron Blake catches State Sen. Laura Kelly, a top Democratic recruit against Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-Kan.), pulling out of the race. Kelly joins several other recent drop-outs, including businessman Jack McDonald, a well-funded challenger to Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) who announced last week that he wouldn’t run. The others are Ohio state Rep. Todd Book, who was running against Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio); former Tennessee state commerce and insurance commissioner Paula Flowers, who was running for Rep. Zach Wamp’s (R-Tenn.) seat; and Solana Beach City Councilman Dave Roberts, who was running against Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.). The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee bragged about these recruits when they got in their respective races, so there’s no spinning the bad news. However, while Democrats won the Jenkins seat in a 2006 upset (before losing it last year), none of these seats were good Democratic targets in 2010. The Cook Political Report rated Jenkins’s seat “R+9,” meaning Republicans had an out-of-the-gate 9-point advantage there. McCaul’s Texas seat is R+10. Schmidt’s seat is R+13, as is Wamp’s seat. Only the Bilbray seat, R+3, is the kind of district that flips in non-wave elections, and Democrats still have credible candidates in the field; Roberts dropped out, he claimed, because he successfully (and to his surprise) won custody of several foster children. Is the lack of fire from red-district Democratic challengers a bad omen for the party in 2010? Absolutely. Does it hurt their chances of holding the House? Not really.

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A Bad Time to Be a Democratic Challenger

The former Republican House Majority Leader, who left Congress in 2003, doesn’t take credit for the “Tea Party” movement. At every opportunity, Armey pays tribute to groups such as the Tea Party Patriots, run on the free time of workaday conservative activists, and he blanches when liberals accuse his organization FreedomWorks — where Armey makes a reported $250,000 per year as a consultant — of hatching their protests. Still, Armey’s second life as a grassroots hero has shed light on the anger modern conservatives have for both parties. Armey is credible because he staged a coup in 1997 against Newt Gingrich (a conservative hero whose star dimmed considerably after he endorsed Dede Scozzafava in NY-23’s special election), and because he quit Congress before — in the minds of Tea Partiers — the GOP majority went off the rails. Armey doesn’t even like the GOP that much; at a November premiere of a Tea Party documentary, he told TWI that the party was only the “best outlet” for free-market conservatives. Next — 5. Eric Cantor

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6. Dick Armey

Republicans began the year in worse shape than they’d been in any time since the 1970s. Conservatives and libertarians, the party’s traditional base, were angry and alienated, swearing that the mistakes of George W. Bush’s failed presidency would never be repeated. By the end of 2009, there had been a massive power shift from the leadership of the movement to its activists, from Washington to places like Watertown, N.Y., and Andrew Breitbart’s Los Angeles basement office. Click here to begin slideshow. Stop back tomorrow for “Ten Conservatives to Watch in 2010.”

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The Best and the Rightest

Two years ago, many Republicans couldn’t stand him. The longtime congressman from Texas made his quixotic presidential campaign all about the Constitution and the Federal Reserve, seemingly to the exclusion of other issues, and for his trouble he was excluded from some of the debates. Reporters, hungry for soundbites and attack lines, and interested more in who would win the nomination than what the candidates thought, found him tiresome — at the very first GOP debate in 2007 , Chris Matthews muttered “Oh, God” when Paul started talking about “original intent.” He raised $35 million and won 1.2 million primary and caucus votes , but when 2008 ended, his slogan sounded extreme. The “Ron Paul Revolution”? What did that word have to do with modern American politics? But at the close of 2009, Paul seems less like an outsider and more like a pioneer. For the first time in his congressional career, he got every Republican colleague on board with a piece of legislation: HR 1207, an attempt to “audit” the Federal Reserve’s activity. His rhetoric and some of his imagery (like Revolutionary War re-enactment) have been copied wholesale by the Tea Party movement. The beliefs held by Paul that were once considered out of the mainstream — a collapsing dollar, obsession with the Fed, an encroaching North American Union, gold as the only safe investment — are now de regueur for Republican candidates. What presidential loser has had more of an impact on the party that rejected him? Click here to replay slideshow.

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1. Ron Paul

Sen. Specter (D-Pa.) made the bold decision to say goodbye to the Republican Party in 2009. Specter announced on April 28 that he would change his party affiliation. His move helped Democrats secure a crucial filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Though Specter’s switch meant he could avoid a difficult GOP primary in 2010, he now faces both a challenge from the left and a host of voters who are giving him less-than-stellar approval ratings. Next — 3. Van Jones

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4. Arlen Specter

Back in October I reported on some of the Tea Party groups’ annoyance with Our Country Deserves Better and its Tea Party Express project, a flashy effort that some original Tea Party organizers viewed as a shell game for Republican consultants. Talking Points Memo followed up on that with a look at the group’s payouts to consultants. Then, the TPE’s Joe Weirzbicki responded to Robert Stacy McCain by arguing that the “vast majority of that money was to reimburse Russo Marsh + Associates for the efforts where we fronted the money in our capacity as the organizers of the Tea Party Express.” Regardless, TPE remains a deeply controversial project for some Tea Party organizers. Robin Stublin, an original Tea Party organizer who has quit Tea Party Patriots in order to keep that group out of this fight, is going straight after TPE, pointing out that its expenses on food and consultant fees are far out of whack with the needs of a real grassroots group. One outrage that he pointed out to me and to Stephanie Mencimer was “$1,597.29 over the summer for a meal for six at a tony Sacramento Chops restaurant.” Stublin is working hard to get out the message about TPE’s buckraking; he even criticized Deborah Johns, a “marine mom” who has presented herself as a sort of pro-war answer to Cindy Sheehan, with a son who ( contrary to Fox News ) is still alive. “I honor, respect, and appreciate every person who’s served in armed forces,” said Stublin. “But if I’m a parent and I take money like this, I think I dishonor that sacrifice.”

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The $1,597.29 Tea Party Dinner

Tickets are now on sale for the first National Tea Party Convention, which will be held February 4-6 in Nashville. It won’t be cheap. An all-access ticket costs $549.00. A ticket to everything but Sarah Palin’s closing speech is $349.00. And a ticket to Palin’s speech, all by itself, also costs $349.00.

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See Sarah Palin Speak for the Low, Low Price of $349.00

In 2009, Deeds clinched the Democratic nomination for Virginia governor, and Democrats pinned their hopes on Deeds to hold the seat for their party. But Deeds’ campaign quickly fizzled. The party attacked Republican opponent Bob McDonnell as a sexist and an extreme conservative, but McDonnell successfully fought off the negative labels. Polls show the attacks reflected badly on Deeds, who also made his own campaign stumbles, including his accidental support for tax increases. McDonnell easily clinched the race in November and Deeds’ campaign went down as a major failure. Next — 2. Jon Corzine

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3. Creigh Deeds

In my piece on Rep. Parker Griffith’s party switch , I quoted Huntsville, Ala., Tea Party leader Christie Carden, one of the conservative activists not impressed by the move. Carden and her fellow Tea Party leaders have just put out a punchy statement on Griffith that makes it clear that they “do not support him” continuing in office. Whole statement after the jump. Yesterday, Alabama’s 5th Congressional District Representative, Parker Griffith, switched from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party. Huntsville Tea Party leaders agree that, “While unexpected, this does not come as a huge shock to us.  We believe Griffith made this choice in an act of desperation because be is afraid of losing the 2010 election.“ “Unfortunately for Parker Griffith, we have high standards for our next congressman, and choice excerpts from his voting record do not satisfy us.  If you look closely at his record you will see that his first vote was for Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House, who is leading the charge for seemingly endless federal control over our lives, and you will see that he has voted with her 84% of the time.” They added, “We do not consider him a constitutional conservative, which is one of our most significant criteria for candidates, or even a conservative at all.  At the Huntsville Space & Rocket Center, when responding to a question about the constitutionality of the health care bill, he indicated that he is past that and that it would be like trying to put toothpaste back into the tube.  He also did not deny, at a town hall over the summer, that he had voted with Pelosi about 75% of the time.” “Over the past year, we have watched him pander towards different audiences.  At August town halls he came out strongly against a government-run health care option.  Yet, we have heard numerous accounts from local progressives, on talk radio and at town halls themselves, that before he was elected, in 2008, he was for a ‘health care for all’ type of option.” They concluded, “We are thankful for Parker Griffith’s committed stance on health care, and that he has voted against major socialist bills this year.  However, we do not trust him and we do not support him as our next congressman.  There are two excellent candidates that are already running in this race: Les Phillip and Mo Brooks.  It is our hope and goal that the strongest constitutional conservative will win, and we look forward to participating in this important race.”

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Tea Partiers on Griffith: ‘We Do Not Trust Him’

One of the most conservative Democrats in the House — a freshman who said he couldn’t support Nancy Pelosi again — is going to switch over to the GOP. Josh Kraushaar has the news , with some context: In August—one month after Republicans picked up his former state legislative seat in a special election—he told a local newspaper that he wouldn’t vote for Nancy Pelosi to remain as House Speaker because she’s too divisive. He joked that if she didn’t like it, he’d provide her with a gift certificate to a mental health center. As Kraushaar reports, Griffith’s switch isn’t an enormous surprise and he had bucked the party on almost every major vote. In the long term, defending Griffith’s seat, which went for the McCain-Palin ticket by 23 points, would have been a 2010 Democratic headache. Nonetheless, this is awful short-term news for Democrats who have to explain away what looks like panic within the ranks about the party’s agenda.

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Rep. Parker Griffith (R-Ala.)

Way back in February, conservative activist John O’Hara helped put together one of the very first Tea Party rallies — a Washington, D.C., party across the street from the White House. Next month, O’Hara’s publishing the first Tea Party book with a major publisher (Wiley) on the movement: “A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes.” The book reports on the stirrings of the movement from O’Hara’s perspective, as he organized the event with J.P. Freire, then the managing editor of the American Spectator and now an editor at the Washington Examiner. A little bit later in the book, O’Hara explains how conservative think tanks rode the wave. The rest of the book — I’ve only read part of it — makes the larger case against the Democratic agenda in a manner that will be familiar to Fox News watchers. For example:

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Tea Party: The Book

The RNC just invited reporters to a Monday conference “ to discuss efforts to stop the Democrat plan for government-run health care,” hosted by party chairman Michael Steele and … Dick Armey, the former House majority leader whose role at FreedomWorks has made him a leader of the Tea Party movement. It was Armey, remember, who made a key early endorsement of Doug Hoffman, the Conservative Party candidate in NY-23 — a move that started a chain reaction ending when the Democratic candidate beat Hoffman and took a safe GOP seat. Steele didn’t seem as enthused about that after election day, but all is forgiven.

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The RNC-Tea Party Tango Continues

Few public figures are as quick to embrace their unflattering monikers as Sen. Tom “ Dr. No ” Coburn (R-Okla.). “We’re accused of being ‘The Party of No,’” Coburn said on the chamber floor this afternoon. “I want to tell my colleagues and the American public that ‘no’ is a wonderful word.” When your child is misbehaving, you say no. When your adolescent child is making bad judgments, you say no. When someone is stealing something from somebody else — i.e., liberty — you say no. When you’re stealing the future, in terms of opportunity, we should say no. When you’re creating a government-centric health care system, rather than a patient-centered health care system, no is a great word. At the moment, the Republicans are saying ‘no’ to funding the troops in the midst of two wars.

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Dr. No: ‘No Is a Wonderful Word’

At this point in the health-reform debate, observers are well aware that the Republican strategy is to delay the vote as long as possible, even if it means dragging out debate on unrelated bills that GOP leaders support. That agenda was on display in October, when it took nearly a month to push through an extension of unemployment benefits that ultimately passed 98 to 0 . And it’s on display today, as Republicans are forcing a long-drawn debate on a defense spending bill that every member of the party will eventually vote for. The tactic forced Democratic leaders to stage a 1 a.m. cloture vote this morning on the defense bill, in hopes of passing the final bill tomorrow morning and moving back to the health-care debate. Forcing that cloture vote is the working definition of a filibuster. And yet GOP leaders have had the temerity to argue that (1) they didn’t filibuster the defense bill and (2) the Democrats are behind all the delays. This isn’t spin — it’s lying. From Roll Call : Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) accused Republicans of attempting to filibuster the Defense bill, which includes funding for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an effort to block work on the health care bill. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and other Republicans, however, sought to place the blame for the funding delay on Democrats, accusing them of dragging their feet in bringing the bill to the floor and arguing they are prepared to pass the bill. “I find it rather curious that our colleague … is accusing Republicans of filibustering this Defense appropriations bill. Republicans don’t control the Senate or the House. The House just passed this bill Wednesday. Now, it could have been passed in October or September,” Kyl said, adding that, “We always vote for the Defense appropriations bill.” Moments later, Kyl refused an attempt to pass the defense bill immediately by unanimous consent. Hours later, he voted against bringing the Defense bill to a final vote. In a perfect world, the Republicans voting with Kyl would be forced to explain why they sought to kill the bill providing troop funding in the middle of two wars.

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Senate Republicans Filibuster Defense Spending Bill — Then Deny They Did It

One of the big themes of yesterday’s “Code Red” rally on Capitol Hill was “Listen to me.” That slogan appeared on buttons sported by members of conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s entourage, and it was pushed hard by Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots. Almost on cue, the Republican National Committee is running a web video featuring “ concerned citizens” complaining that Congress is not “listening” to them. It’s being launched with a “Listen to Me” rally: On the 236 th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele will hold a rally with concerned citizens today at 12:00 p.m. EST to encourage Democrats to listen to the American people and stop health care and focus on the economy. Steele said in the summer that “change is coming in a teabag,” so the full-body embrace of the movement doesn’t come as a surprise.

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From the Tea Party to the RNC

Here’s more video from the front end of today’s “red alert” anti-health care reform protest — a lengthy first crack at a Tea Party version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” A hint: Skip to 5:10.

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The Tea Party Christmas Carol

Here, via Jim Newell , is a striking example of the Tea Party movement grabbing and appropriating a tactic of the anti-war movement: On Tuesday, December 15 at 8:45 AM thousands of us will meet in Washington, DC at the fountain in Upper Senate Park. From there we will march to the Senate offices, go inside, and demonstrate our opposition to the government takeover of health care. We call this plan “Government Waiting Rooms”. The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor.

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‘Some Of Us Will Pretend to Die From Our Untreated Illnesses’

Jim Geraghty finds it — the party is doing rather well in special elections for state legislative seats, taking them by a two-to one margin over the Democrats in 2009. That is, if nothing else, a good barometer for voter enthusiasm. In Kentucky, where Republicans held on to a state Senate seat this week, the Democratic candidate had a longer resume and more funds — and lost handily. Not an auspicious sign in a state that was seen at the start of 2009 as one of the Democrats’ prime opportunities for a U.S. Senate seat gain.

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The Invisible Republican Comeback

Rothstein `fraud' funded campaign donations MiamiHerald.com Except for Sink, a few Democrats and a single $200000 check Rothstein gave to the Florida Democratic Party in September, most of Rothstein's political … and more

A new Washington Post poll in the Virginia gubernatorial race has Republican candidate Bob McDonnell jumping to a 9-point lead over Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds, a 5-point boost that the newspaper credits in part to Deeds’s “bungling questions from reporters about whether he supports a tax increase.” Republican candidates hold identical 9-point leads in the races for lieutenant governor and attorney general. I’ve heard increasing chatter over the past week that Democrats may triage and try to win just one of the statewide elections — the attorney general’s race — if Deeds’ stumbles look to be insurmountable. A Republican sweep would put Ken Cuccinelli, the party’s candidate for AG, in pole position for a 2012 Senate bid or, more likely, a 2013 campaign for governor. (Former Sen. George Allen is also seen as a top candidate for either one of those elections.)

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GOP Takes Command in Virginia

The British Conservative Party has just wrapped its 2009 conference, its last before what is universally expected to be a 2010 victory over the ruling Labour Party. In his closing speech , party leader David Cameron appeared to put some daylight between the commitment of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the commitment of the incoming government. “We are not in Afghanistan to deliver the perfect society,” said Cameron. “We are there stop the re-establishment of terrorist camps.” The mission, as he described it: “We send more soldiers to train more Afghans to give us that security we need, and then we bring our troops back home.”

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UK Conservatives Reject ‘Open-Ended’ Afghanistan Mission

Expect to hear a lot more about this . Republicans, who were utterly crushed in New Mexico’s 2008 elections, picked up the mayoralty and city council of Albuquerque last night, aided considerably by Democrat Richard Romero running as a spoiler to the left of Democratic Mayor Martin Chavez. Republicans, who held one of the state’s Senate seats and two of its House seats, lost all of that last year. But expect to hear mayor-elect Richard Berry tipped as a candidate for the swing House seat anchored in Albuquerque in 2012, and expect to hear this mentioned as a piece with a Republican comeback if the party scores more victories next month.

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Republicans in Albuquerque

The son of Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) handily beat Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson (R) in the first quarter , raising $1.1 million to Grayson’s $600,000. As I noted when Paul first got into the race, his ability to raise a lot of money from a national base is going to muddle Republicans’ strategy in the state–the party has not made an endorsement, but Grayson polls better than Paul at the moment.

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Rand Paul Hauls $1.1m for Senate Race

I reported yesterday that there was some friction between the Tea Party Patriots and Our Country Deserves Better PAC, the organization that launched the Tea Party Express. Today, I confirmed that the discord is real, and that Amy Kremer, formerly a national coordinator of Tea Party Patriots, was pushed out last week because of her decision to join the upcoming Tea Party Express tour. “As an organization, we do our best to be completely nonpartisan,” said Mark Meckler, a national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots. “That’s one of things that’s allowed us to survive when we were called Republican tools. Tea Party Patriots are very dissatisfied with the Republican Party — we have nothing against Our Country Deserves Better PAC, but they raise money for Republicans.” Meckler did say that the antics of Mark Williams, the former radio host who has become a spokesman for Tea Party Express — and is often identified as a “Tea Party leader” because of this — played a role in the pushback. “Williams has a tendency to go out to national media and say exceptionally inflammatory things,” said Meckler. “That can lead to the Tea Party movement being painted by the left as a bunch of racists. And that’s not the Tea Party movement.” Joe Wierzbicki of OCDB disputed my characterization of the group as “Republican-centric” and “late comers” to the Tea Party movement. “We had 2008 Libertarian Vice Presidential Candidate Wayne Allen Root speaking in Las Vegas,” said Wierzbicki, “had Independents AND Democrats speak at the various tea party rallies.” And he provided evidence that OCDB had endorsed Tea Parties from the beginning. Still, members of Tea Party Patriots argued that they had brought OCDB into the actual day-to-day of the Tea Parties, and that Williams was taking credit for a movement he had not started.

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Tea Party Patriots vs. Tea Party Express

This friendly Politico piece on Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) effort to “reshape the Republican Party in his own center-right image” doesn’t quite take the edge off of Steve Schmidt’s comments about Sarah Palin. The McCain-Palin 2008 campaign manager , speaking yesterday in Washington: Most politicians of prominence write a book. My honest view is that she would not be a winning candidate for president and if she was the results would be … catastrophic. It’s fairly inconceivable she could be elected. Did McCain boost Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) a little by backing him for a Senate race he was probably going to enter anyway? Sure. But the politician that McCain lifted from obscurity to national power was Sarah Palin, and the party is going to wrestle with that for years. – You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook .

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The McCain Campaign Versus Sarah Palin, Chapter XXXVIII

The former GOP House majority leader, now president of FreedomWorks, endorsed dark horse Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio back in July, but today he lends his name to a fundraising letter explicitly calling Rubio’s campaign a new stage of the Tea Party. This month, I was proud to march in Washington with over 800,000 fellow Americans committed to taking back their government from big spending politicians. But the fight for freedom didn’t end there. I’m working to make sure the spirit and commitment behind the march are alive all across the nation. One of the things I’m doing is making sure we elect good people to public office. One of those candidates is Marco Rubio . Marco understands that the tea party and town hall movements are symbolic of the wider frustration so many Americans feel toward government. Whole letter after the jump: This month, I was proud to march in Washington with over 800,000 fellow Americans committed to taking back their government from big spending politicians. But the fight for freedom didn’t end there.  I’m working to make sure the spirit and commitment behind the march are alive all across the nation.  One of the things I’m doing is making sure we elect good people to public office. One of those candidates is Marco Rubio . Marco understands that the tea party and town hall movements are symbolic of the wider frustration so many Americans feel toward government.  High taxes, the wasteful “stimulus” bill, cap-and-trade energy taxes and Obamacare are just some of the reasons people are so motivated to stand up and take action in defense of freedom. As I said when I endorsed him, Marco Rubio is a champion of freedom and an inspiring leader for the next generation of the conservative movement . His track record and conservative convictions are a breath of fresh air in a party looking for new leaders to advance the principles of limited government, lower taxes and economic liberty. We need his energetic conservative leadership in the Senate.  We need someone like him who will stand up for freedom no matter which party is placing it in jeopardy.  With the September 30 fundraising deadline quickly approaching, he needs your help today . Marco has a tough fight on his hands.  The political insiders in Washington and in Florida have hand-picked another, much more liberal candidate as the Republican Party’s standard bearer for this Senate seat.  Governor Crist has lots of establishment money, but he doesn’t have Marco’s conservative vision, commitment to ideas, ability to deliver our message, or the support of thousands and thousands of citizens fed up with business as usual. Together, you and I can help Marco overcome the fundraising deficit.  Please send him what you can today – whether it’s the maximum $2400, $1000, $500, $100 or $25.  The September 30 fundraising deadline is almost here, so Marco needs you to act now . Anything you can send will show the insiders that we are serious about preserving freedom in America.  Please support Marco today and show that ideas and principles still prevail in our party . Proud to Stand with Marco and for Freedom, Dick Armey

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Dick Armey for Marco Rubio

It’s hardly a surprise now when Republican leaders align themselves with the Tea Party movement, and the Value Voters Summit has been full of it. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) got closest to the spirit of the crowd — which had heard wildly diverging estimates of the 9/12 march on Washington all day. “If the national media covers this like it covered the events last weekend,” said Pence, “the headline will be: ‘Dozens attend Value Voters Summit!’” Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) heaped the most fulsome praise on the Tea Party movement, bashing the media for the way it had covered the protests. “You know who these protesters were,” said McConnell, “because you were the people at these town halls … you were the men and women who filled the Mall here in the District to overflowing last Saturday, surprising even the strongest supporters of the event. “You’re the people who prove the politicians wrong when they say that all this activism and unrest was crafted, somehow, in a boardroom, down on K Street. The grassroots movement isn’t astroturf, as they like to put it. It’s something that started at your kitchen tables.” Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) praised the protesters from the stage for “fighting on the fighting lines of what we know is a battle for our democracy.” After his speech, he told TWI that the protests represented an “awakening in America.” “People are beginning to wake up and see a country they don’t really recognize,” said Cantor.

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McConnell, Pence, Cantor, Praise Tea Party Protests