We told you yesterday about the fears among Tea Party activists that a planned national convention, at which Sarah Palin will speak, is too expensive for regular folks to attend — and may be a bid by corporate or political interests to co-opt the movement. (TPMmuckraker — or half of it — talked about the issue with Rachel Maddow last night.)
And it sounds like at least one influential conservative voice agrees.
“I think this national tea party convention smells scammy,” RedState founder Erick Erickson wrote yesterday.
He went on:
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.
I am led to believe a number of the sponsors who lent their names early on have grown wary of the event. That lines up with what I am hearing.
…
The tea party “leaders”, if there are any, are actively at work in their home towns changing things one letter to the editor, one contribution to a candidate, and one protest at a time. They are not on bus tours headed to Nashville licking their lips at the $500.00 per person payments coming in to their for profit company.
