By Kathleen Hennessey
McClatchy Newspapers
NASHVILLE – The burgeoning tea party movement should remain leaderless and decentralized, former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said Saturday, calling the effort “bigger than any king or queen of the tea party.”
“Put your faith in ideas. I caution against allowing this movement to be defined by one leader or operation,” she told the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville. The small government movement is “a ground-up call to action that’s forcing both parties to change the way they’re doing business. This is about the people.”
In her keynote address, Palin offered her analysis of President Obama’s foreign policy record and delivered a critique of his stimulus package – decrying the federal deficit as “generational theft.” The list of Obama’s broken promises is long, Palin said in her signature folksy delivery.
“How’s that hopey, changing stuff workin’ out for ya?” she asked 1,000 or so supporters who paid $300 apiece to attend her speech.
She said Obama’s proposed 2001 budget is “immoral” because it increases the national debt.
Palin told the group that America’s national debt, which is held largely by other nations, “makes us less free” and “should tick us off.”
She also criticized the administration’s handling of the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day, saying questioning the suspect for 50 minutes and then reading him his Miranda rights is not the way to treat an alleged terrorist. She said he does not deserve the constitutional rights that U.S. soldiers are willing to die for.
Palin applauded the president’s decision to increase forces in Afghanistan while deriding his efforts at diplomacy, singling out North Korea.
“We must spend less time courting our adversaries and more time working with our allies,” the former Alaska governor said. “The lesson of that last year is this: Foreign policy cannot be managed through the politics of personality.”
In recent months, Palin has positioned herself outside the Republican Party establishment. She passed on an invitation to attend the annual Conservative Political Action Conference and agreed to speak at the Nashville event.
Palin also has said she would attend two upcoming tea party events: a rally next month in Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nev., and an April get-together in Boston. Both gatherings are being organized by the Sacramento-based Tea Party Express.
Palin remained committed to the Nashville conference even after some tea party groups questioned its financing and accused the Tea Party Nation, which organized the event, of profiteering. A handful of sponsors pulled out of the event citing the hefty price tag of $560 for a ticket to the full convention.
Reps. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., backed out over concerns they might later run into trouble with the House Ethics Committee.
And the price kept some devoted fans from seeing Palin – but it did not keep them from trying.
Merle Firestone got up at 4 a.m., left a note on the coffee pot for his wife and drove from Rainbow, Miss., to try to see the former governor, even though he could not afford the ticket. The 72-year-old retired small business owner and bow-hunter said he particularly liked Palin’s support for his sport. He said he had been following the tea party movement as he watched his friends and children struggle with the recession.
“I don’t have any answers, I just want people to get back to work,” he said, standing by as conventioneers went in and out of the hall in the Gaylord Opryland Hotel. When Firestone tried to get in without a pass, he was turned away. But, he said, there were plenty of like-minded people to chat with in the hallways.
The roughly 600 people who attended the full convention were overwhelmingly white, older and disproportionately from neighboring states. They seemed united in their opposition to the growth of government and their belief Obama’s policies represent a dangerous creep of socialism into American life. They also were united in plans to turn what began as a protest movement into a political force for conservative candidates in the midterm elections.
Still, many resisted the suggestion they would unite under leadership from Palin or any other figure.
“I don’t think the tea party movement has a leader,” said Charlene Miller, of Cincinnati. “That’s not what this is about. She embodies the spirit of the tea party movement.”