Politics

Tea Party Convention Squeezes Fans

By Anne Landman

The Tea Party movement s putting on its "First National Tea Party Convention" next month in Nashville, Tennessee, but the event is drawing the wrath of some Teabaggers. The convention will be held at a swank hotel where room rates start at $189 per night, and admission to the conference costs $549 -- a lot for a movement that purports to consist of ordinary grassroots Americans. Also, one faction of the party called the Tea Party Patriots, is irritated that another faction, the Tea Party Express -- which is strongly linked to a Republican consulting firm -- is attending, even though the "Patriots" faction doesn't mind working with FreedomWorks, a front group backed by ExxonMobil and billionaires Steve Forbes and Richard Scaife. Fox News commentator Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak at the conference, too, but Tea Partiers who can't afford to attend the whole conference will have to pay $349 to get in.

Full post as published by PR Watch on January 14, 2010 (boomark / email).