Red State’s Erick Erickson: “Tea Party Convention Smells Scammy”

Tea partiers aren’t all getting along.  Some of them are aghast at a tea party convention that they feel is too tied to the GOP, costs too much ($549 a head), and doesn’t represent the grass roots.

Tea Party Patriots, which helped put together a September rally that drew tens of thousands to Washington, view the confab — which is being held at Nashville’s swank Opryland Gaylord hotel — as the “usurpation of a grassroots movement,” according to Mark Meckler, a leader of the group.

Now, even Erick Erickson (pictured) of Red State, who has not always made the most rational statements, wants no part of them, and says that by keynoting the Nashville event, “Sarah Palin might be ruining herself unintentionally.”

I am afraid Sarah Palin is going to harm herself unintentionally over this tea party convention in Nashville.

Full disclosure: I have asked several of the tea party organizations that, early on, I was supportive of to stop using my name and RedState’s logo. I think 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.

That’s not to say it is in every case. I have much good to say about groups like Tea Party Patriots, but I think this national tea party convention smells scammy.

Let me be blunt: charging people $500.00 plus the costs of travel and lodging to go to a “National Tea Party Convention” run by a for profit group no one has ever heard of sounds as credible as an email from Nigeria promising me a million bucks if I fork over my bank account number.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.