Tea Party Nation Founder: ‘A Wise Idea’ To Only Let Property Owners Vote

Judson Phillips, leader of Tea Party Nation.

Tea Party Nation Founder: ‘A Wise Idea’ To Only Let Property Owners Vote

TPM MUCKRAKER

Jillian Rayfield | December 3, 2010, 5:35PM

Judson Phillips, the founder of the group Tea Party Nation, has defended his comments that the Founding Fathers’ original plan to only allow property owners to vote “makes a lot of sense” because “property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners.”

In an email to ThinkProgress yesterday, Phillips doubled down, referring to the radio broadcast last week in which he made the comments: “During the course of our discussion, I mentioned that the Founding Fathers limited voting rights to property owners. I commented this was a wise idea.”

He continued:

Apparently, two weeks after the show, some liberal stumbled across it and today, that comment has turned into liberal headlines such as, “Tea Party Nation President says It Makes A Lot of Sense to Restrict Voting to Property Owners” and “Tea Party Leaders Attack Constitution.” Suddenly, this has morphed from a discussion between two tea partiers into articles claiming that I want to change the Constitution to restrict voting to property owners.

Phillips is also known for defending an email he wrote calling for supporters to help “retire” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) because “he is the only Muslim member of congress,” among other things.

Here’s the original audio clip:

SOURCE

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Tea Party Convention Is Canceled

Tea Party Convention Is Canceled

New York Times – September 24, 2010, 11:04 am

By KATE ZERNIKE

The Tea Party is off.

At least, the National Tea Party Unity Convention that was being planned for mid-October in Las Vegas is off. It was supposed to be a repeat of the convention in Nashville last February, which drew 600 “delegates” (and almost as many reporters) and an adoring audience for Sarah Palin, the keynote speaker.

Sponsored by Tea Party Nation, a social networking site, the convention was supposed to emphasize Tea Party groups working together — a contrast to the convention in February, which was plagued by infighting among groups, with sponsors and speakers dropping out right up until its opening hours. Organizers chose Las Vegas not least because it is the center of the Senate race that Tea Party activists would most dearly love to win: Sharron Angle, a Republican supported by Tea Party groups, is challenging Harry Reid, the leader of the Democratic majority.

Barbee Kinnison, a Tea Party activist in Las Vegas who had been helping organize the convention, sent an e-mail to supporters saying that it was with “deep sorrow” that she had to announce “the convention is just not going to happen.”

Tea Party Nation still draws scorn from some other Tea Party groups, which have raised eyebrows at asking people to spend more than $200 to attend a convention, so it was not clear what this said about the strength of the movement. Tea Party Patriots, a large umbrella for about 2,700 local Tea Party groups nationwide, had criticized the media attention on the convention in February, saying it was not a real representation of Tea Party activism.

MORE HERE

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Sarah Palin: Crib Notes On The Palm

Sarah Palin: Faux Populist

Alec Baldwin
Actor
Huffington Post– Posted: February 9, 2010 01:13 PM

So, you think Sarah Palin is embarrassed by the crib-notes-on-the-palm incident?

You’re kidding, right?

This woman, like national candidates of both parties, doesn’t draw a breath without a team of political and image consultants vetting her choices. Wardrobe, hair, make-up, speaking style, text, context. This woman hasn’t moved a muscle spontaneously since she was selected as McCain’s running mate.

These gaffes represent a gamble by Palin and her handlers, a bet they are hedging. Republicans and economically weary, anti-Obama independents want W back again. You remember. George W Bush, who, as Ann Richards famously stated, was “born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” Bush, who stumbled through his eight years with an anti-intellectual, homespun style that embraced malapropisms and a legendarily incurious attitude toward issues and the world. Some celebrated him as honest and more real. That was all calculated, too.

Palin reads off the palm of her hand because she can’t whittle or cast a fly rod or shoot a wild animal while giving a policy speech. (Then again, who knows?) She reads her palm in order to send a message to her anti-Eastern establishment, Obama-hating, OK-You’ve-Had-Your-Black-President-Experiment, Tea Party types. That message is, “I’m just one person, doing the best I can with what God gave me. Like all y’all out there.”

And it was aimed right at that camera. Right at you and me.

I still believe in Barack Obama. Each new president since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 has been faced with an ever-growing mountain of problems that resist solutions, let alone solutions crafted with bipartisan support. Energy, America’s dwindling role in the global economy, health care, terrorism and its impacts.

We may struggle for the remainder of our history to solve those problems and we may come up short. But we are doomed to failure if we choose another incurious, phony populist who pulls off some bad Will Rogers moves and calls that a presidency.

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Sarah Palin: Bust Up the Republican Party And the Tea Party Movement?

Sarah Palin Aims to Bust Up the Republican Party — And the Tea Party Movement

AlterNet / By Adele M. Stan

Palin’s speech was her boilerplate of non sequiturs and cognitive disconnections, but in the interview that followed, she revealed her hand in a game for the presidency.

February 8, 2010

Sarah Palin appears to be running for president of the United States of America. You betcha.

In an interview with Chris Wallace, recorded on the eve of her Saturday night special of a speech to the Tea Party Nation convention in Nashville (and aired yesterday on Fox News Sunday), Palin didn’t quite confirm that speculation, but left the door wide open.

“Why wouldn’t you run for president?” Wallace asked.

“I would,” Palin replied. “I would if I believe that that is the right thing to do for our country and for the Palin family. Certainly, I would do so.”

Palin’s address to the Tea Partiers was standard for her: boilerplate in its arrangement of non sequiturs and cognitive disconnects. She railed against the Obama administration for ostensibly violating the 10th Amendment to the Constitution — the one that guarantees states’ rights — and then offered a health-care “fix” that violates that very amendment (allowing consumers to purchase policies across state lines, which basically intrudes upon the state’s right to regulate the insurance industry within the state). She charged the administration with trampling on the Constitution, while asserting that “foreign terrorists” arrested here aren’t entitled to constitutional rights. (Uh, actually, the Constitution confers those rights on anyone in the U.S. justice system — citizen or not.)

She stoked up the right’s anti-intellectual animus by taking shots at President Obama’s alleged elitism, and went after him for purportedly being soft on terrorism and dictators. All predictable, and a good move if you’re planning to be the opposition candidate to the president’s 2012 bid for re-election.

But during the question-and-answer session that followed with Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips, Palin departed from the chant of her familiar refrain to tacitly reveal her hand — and not just the talking points scribbled on it — for the strategy she may use to clear her path to the presidency. That path-clearing seems to involve the sowing of discord, not just within the Republican Party, but within the Tea Party movment as well, along with a sprinkle of discord dust on the Democratic Party for good measure.

Palin took pre-selected questions from conference attendees that were submitted through the Tea Party Nation Web site, and read by Phillips.

In answer to one question, Palin noted with enthusiasm that many Tea Party activists are not registered Republicans — just like the former first dude of Alaska.

“My husband — he’s not a registered Republican. He’s probably more conservative than I am, ” she told the convention.

Indeed, Todd Palin, for seven years was a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, which is the Alaska chapter of the theocratic Constitution Party founded by Howard Phillips (no relation to Judson Phillips), one of the architects of the religious right.

MORE HERE

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Tea Party Express Slams ‘Smears’

Lloyd Marcus

In Damage Control Mode, Tea Party Express Slams ‘Smears’

TPM Muckraker

Zachary Roth | February 1, 2010, 9:52AM

In an aggressive damage control effort launched in the wake of a barrage of negative publicity, a leading Tea Party group created by a Republican consulting firm is pushing back against what it calls “false and malicious attacks.”

The Tea Party Express (TPE) yesterday sent an email to supporters slamming “attack hit pieces” by TPMmuckraker and other outlets. The recent stories, writes TPE’s Lloyd Marcus under the TPE banner, amount to “a range of rumors, accusations, allegations, smears and mischaracterizations of what we at the Tea Party Express are supposedly about.” Marcus, the African-American country singer who has become a prominent TPE spokesman, promises another email soon that will “debunk” the “smears.”

In fact, much of the recent criticism of TPE, which was launched by Russo, Marsh, a well-connected Republican consulting firm, has come from other members of the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party Patriots have accused TPE of being a GOP front group at odds with the grassroots Tea Party ethos, and have suggested that Russo, Marsh intends to profit financially from the venture. TPMmuckraker reported in December that the majority of spending by the PAC that controls TPE went to Russo, Marsh, which is led by the veteran California Republican operative Sal Russo.

Before withdrawing last week citing scheduling issues, TPE had planned to attend the upcoming National Tea Party Convention, which itself has suffered a barrage of attacks by grassroots Tea Partiers who see it as an effort to hijack the movement for profit.

In yesterday’s email — oddly titled, “I have some juicy dirt about Tea Party Express” — Marcus writes that he sees the criticism as evidence of success. “You know [Tea Party Express] has become a powerful force when people take shots at you,” he writes.

Marcus includes video footage from TPE rallies across the country. “This is our record of who we are, and we’re proud of it,” he writes, “and I can tell you that I won’t let anyone even try to rewrite this history!”

An excerpt from the email follows:

MORE HERE

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The Unraveling Of The Tea Party Convention

Tea Party Nation Speaks Out: ‘We Never Did This To Be Rich And Famous’

TPM Muckraker

Christina Bellantoni | January 30, 2010, 5:49PM

Tea Party Nation organizers today issued a long defense of their unraveling convention, lambasting former members they say are trying to harm the movement and outlining for the first time in great detail their event’s sponsorships and problems.

We’ve been following the travails of the upcoming Tea Party Nation convention for weeks, with key speakers withdrawing and the Tea Party Express group backing out as well thanks to feuds over the cost and expected profits of the convention.

Sherry Phillips wrote a long email to members of the Tea Party Nation mailing list titled “Setting The Record Straight.”

Phillips said organizers were encouraged to speak out against the “intense media scrutiny and attacks by former members” but she stayed silent so as not to further divisions “that are already hurting this movement.”

“We will stay silent no longer,” she wrote.

She goes into detail about convention sponsors American Liberty Alliance, American Majority and Campaign for Liberty, and said the Tea Party Express only withdrew because of their push to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in Nevada.

She calls out “former Tea Party Nation members” for “discussing their association with liberal media outlets” and “conspiring” to harm TPN and the convention.

MORE HERE

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Tea Party Convention Losing Key Sponsor

Tea Party Protester

Key Sponsor Pulls Out Of Tea Party Convention

TPM Muckraker

Zachary Roth | January 13, 2010, 10:01AM

One of the key co-sponsors of the National Tea Party Convention has pulled out of the event, citing concerns over the financial arrangements of Tea Party Nation, the group organizing the confab.

Eric Odom of American Liberty Alliance is seen by many as one of the founders of the Tea Party movement. His group had been listed as a “gold” co-sponsor of the convention, and in an interview Friday with TPMmuckraker, Odom sounded bullish about it. But today he writes that his group “will sit out” the event:

[T]he controversy surrounding the event involves conversations about the infrastructure of the Tea Party Nation and the way its finances are channeled through private bank accounts and paypal accounts.To be clear, the for-profit model has its place in the movement. Many, MANY groups in the movement operate this way. But these groups should always have boards and oversight, and should never, ever process donations through personal paypal accounts.

In this particular case, it’s entirely possible that those involved are operating in a fair way. But 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.

As we’ve reported, some activists have raised concerns over the $549 price tag for the event, and have suggested that the prime organizer, Nashville attorney Judson Phillips, is seeking to profit financially from it. And RedState founder Erick Erickson has written that the convention “smells scammy.”

Odom’s decision may have been prompted in part by a lengthy and detailed blog post, which appeared yesterday, from a Nashville activist, who had worked with Phillips on Tea Party events last year. Among numerous allegations leveled by Kevin Smith against Phillips is the claim that Phillips said he had to set up Tea Party Nation as a for-profit corporation because Barack Obama planned to ban non-profits. Smith also described Phillips as “the kind of attorney who would regularly use his status as a legal professional to threaten and intimidate people into giving him what he wanted.”

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