#1198 Tea Teaser

As the 2012 Presidential campaign gets underway here in the first part of 2010, everybody seems to know what they don’t want and nobody knows what to give up to get it.
The Tea Party folks are pretty sure they don’t want taxes. But if they’ll have to give up Uncle Ned’s Social Security check and start paying for his living costs themselves they scream to high heaven.
They’re like most folks—anti big government unless that big government is giving them a check. Don’t mess with my Medicare, my dad shouts; in the same breath that he says Obamacare is socialism.
That’s just how we are. But I gotta say, I was a little let down after all the hype about the Tea Bagger convention in Nashville. First you had a lot of people pull out because the $500-plus ticket price was so steep. And because it went for a for-profit company.
Darn capitalists.
Second, there were only about 1,000 people there. 1,000 people and all that media hype? And according to the supposedly liberal press, this is a national movement of revolutionary proportions. And they only managed a thousand people?
I’ve emceed bigger cocktail parties.
Maybe tea isn’t that popular.
Then their big name speaker, Sarah Palin, charged those poor folks who can’t afford taxes a hundred thousand bucks just to see her.
Maybe she was hoping the hype would get her noticed in the other, more-established, conservative convention held right after. The CPAC convention. The most conservative political action committee the Republicans have.
With all the Tea Party furor, you’d have expected they would dominate the CPAC convention. If so, apparently they have spoken. 2012 could be Ron Paul’s year. He won the straw poll of favored candidates with 31%. Mitt Romney, who won the last 3 years, got 22%. And at a distant third was the voluntarily former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin.
The tea totals are in. The most conservative wing of a very conservative party gave her a mere 7% of the vote.
But don’t worry too much Sarah, as I recall, neither Mitt nor Ron nor Paul won the last presidential nomination, much less the election.
Still, it’s lucky that Fox job came through when it did.
America, ya gotta love it.