WashPost, please define "Tea Party leaders"
February 06, 2010 9:23 am ET by Eric Boehlert
From a caption at washingtonpost.com [emphasis added]:
Six hundred tea party leaders arrived Thursday, Feb. 4, 2010, for the first-ever three-day National Tea Party Convention. Organizers announced the creation of a political action committee called Ensuring Liberty Corp.
"Leaders"? Wasn't the Tea Party convention open, on a first-come, first-serve basis, to whoever wrote checks to cover the nearly $600 convention costs? How does that make them "leaders" of a political movement?
UPDATED: Oops, from the accompanying article:
It's a critical moment for a movement that is unmistakably people-powered, that has been deliberately left leaderless to give voice to all frustrations.
If the movement is leaderless, than how did its leaders arrive at the convention?
UPDATED: More WashPost oddities:
The 600 delegates at the National Tea Party Convention feel taxed to death, ignored by their elected representatives and the media, and appalled at the federal government's spending -- and there are millions of Americans just like them. Their anger has helped claim some political scalps, and they vow to "take back America."
Really? Tea Party conservatives feel "ignored" by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Weekly Standard, National Review, Michael Savage, Drudge, Towhnall.com, WND, the WSJ, and the NYPost?
Do they realize that most of them got a tax cut under Obama or that the highest marginal tax rate is 35% now but was 50% under Reagan and 90% under Eisenhower? Do these people know ANYTHING?
I probably would have joined the Tea Party if they were around when I was 15 years old. I recall feeling "taxed to death" when I got my first above-the-boards jobs. I worked at a gas station, and in a restaurant in high school, probably making 4 or 5 bucks an hour (close to minimum wage in the 70s) and I was outraged at what was left after taxes.
Of course, I matured a bit, and decided to work harder and make more money, rather than asking the Nanny State to solve my problem.
These teabaggers are pretty sad. Not that I don't feel compassion for a bunch of middle-aged and elderly failures who are still making minimum wage, but they really should try pulling up their bootstraps and taking responsibility, instead of asking the government for a handout.
1. What evidence do you present that Tea Party members are "a bunch of middle-aged and elderly failures who are still making minimum wage?"
2. How is petitioning the government for lower taxes "asking the government for a handout"?