Nashville Tea Party Convention

No, I didn't go. Can't afford things like that. 'Bout all I can afford is to sit around making snarky comments. So here goes.

The sloganizing at the convention annoyed me. All that chanting of "liberal this" and "socialist that". I had higher hopes for the tea parties. Back in the day at the start of the movement (last spring), the reason to attend a tea party event was to join with other people who think government is too big and we are taxed more than enough. But the politicians played their games. Republicans despised the tea parties for being like RINOs (Republicans in name only) and Democrats scorned them for being closet Republicans. Both resented the perception that the tea parties took some of the best aspects from both sides of American politics.

The Dems and the GOPs fought it out on who was going to define the tea parties - and they both won. The Nashville convention had all the charm of a Republican country club extravaganza. Both political factions should be proud that they have marginalized the tea parties. And the good people at the convention will likely be horrified when they wake up and realize that they are now seen as Republican lite - merely bit players in the same old partisan games.