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Internal disputes roil Tea Party convention

It was supposed to be a gathering of true believers, an occasion to
celebrate the Tea Party movement's grassroots victories. And activists
have had victories -- fanning opposition to President Obama's healthcare
reform package in those angry tea party town halls last summer, along
with last week's come-from-behind U.S. Senate victory for Republican
Scott Brown in Massachusetts that denied Democrats their 60-vote majority.

Convention organizers were thrilled when they got a star headliner --
former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- to keynote the Tea Party convention
planned for Nashville next month.

But now rifts within the movement are threatening to derail the
convention, organized by Tea Party Nation. The conflict: a convention
that seeks to maximize the Tea Party's political clout by developing a
mainstream organization and an audience of angry voters dedicated to
grassroots actions and suspicious of top-down management.

“The idea that there’s one person, one event, that can somehow be the
Tea Party spokesperson is inaccurate and counter to the movement of
free-thinking individuals that want less government intervention,” says
John O’Hara, author of “A New American Tea Party.” “This top-down model
is what’s being rejected in politics, and that you’d adopt that for your
movement is bizarre.”

Some have balked at the price tag for the convention -- $549 per ticket
and a $9.95 fee, plus hotel and airfare -- as out of touch with the
lifestyle of the average tea partier. Others have raised eyebrows at
Palin's reported $100,000 speaking fee.

And some have withdrawn from the convention altogether. Philip Glass was
supposed to lead workshops on his strategy as national director of the
National Precinct Alliance, which seeks to influence Republican Party
politics by putting conservatives in local and state offices. But now
he's walking.

“We are very concerned about the appearance of TPN profiteering and
exploitation of the grassroots movement,” he said in a statement Sunday.
“We were under the impression that TPN was a nonprofit organization like
NPA, interested only in uniting and educating Tea Party activists on how
to make a real difference in the political arena.”

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It'll be a great gathering of...slime.