Tea Party 2.0

NASHVILLE, Tenn.-The Tea Party carnival arrived in Music City this weekend for what is being dubbed as the exploding movement's first-ever convention.

But the activity Friday at the cavernous Gaylord Opryland Resort took on a more businesslike manner. The Tea Party is trying to mature itself ahead of this November's elections. Call it Tea Party 2.0

Mark Skoda, a Memphis-based Tea Partier and one of the event's organizers, told the estimated 600 attendees that holding signs and having rallies was not enough. He said true change must come through electing officials who share the group's conservative values.

"What we need now is another 40 Scott Browns," Skoda said to cheers. Indeed, the Tea Partiers at the convention still seemed to be hung over from Brown's U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts. This is ironic since Brown considers himself a moderate Republican who does not walk in lockstep with many of the conventioneers' social conservative values. Yet they credit his victory for halting healthcare overhaul, the Tea Party's top enemy for all of 2009. Attendees said Brown's victory demonstrated that the Tea Party effort has traction.

"This movement is going to be around for awhile," crowed fellow convention organizer Judson Phillips, who is with Tea Party Nation, one of numerous Tea Party groups trying to take the national lead in what has largely been a localized movement.

People, namely elected officials, better start listening, said Bill Bruss, who came to Nashville from Winfield, Ill. To Bruss, this is not a Republican movement; it is an American movement.

"People are angry toward the GOP as much as the Democrats," he told me. "There are no sacred cows. The best man who comes up will get the vote."

Indeed, delegates here mostly used the word "independent" to describe themselves.

But conservative might be a better word.

The group is fighting for fiscal responsibility, lower taxes, state rights, and a strong federal focus on national security. To that end, some in the movement say it is time to become more centralized when it comes to throwing the largely disjointed national movement's weight behind candidates for office.

On Friday, Skoda announced the launch of a civic nonprofit organization called the Ensuring Liberty Corporation, which will establish a political action committee to endorse political candidates.

Skoda said the Memphis-based group would first focus on at least a half-dozen races, primarily in the Southeast. But he hopes soon to support candidates nationwide.

"I'm not a politician. I'm a guy who works a day job and happens to love his country," explained Skoda, trying to emphasize the grassroots, everyman image the movement likes to project.

But fellow organizer Phillips said he opposes the notion that the Tea Party should endorse specific candidates: "I think candidates should endorse the Tea Party movement."

The disagreement between two leaders at the same convention shows the disjointed nature of a group that boasts thousands of organizations across the country.

The convention took some heat in the lead-up to this weekend. Some balked at the $549 cost for attending the convention and the additional $349 to see Sarah Palin speak at the event's closing banquet Saturday night. Palin is slated to receive a $100,000 speaker's fee for her appearance, which she said she will donate to charity. Furthermore, other large Tea Party groups withheld support for the convention and some Tea Party-friendly congressional lawmakers withdrew from the conference after learning that Tea Party Nation is a for-profit company.

Phillips joked that the event's profits would be in the "high two figures. Just enough to take our volunteers out on the dollar menu."

The crowd at the hotel on Friday did have an upper-middle-class flavor. Many stayed busy taking notes at seminars on how to use social networks, how to register voters, and how to get young voters more involved.

But at least one attendee tried to keep alive the revelry found at 2009 Tea Party gatherings: William Temple of Brunswick, Ga, walked around in a colonial outfit with an iron teapot tied to his belt. Speaking in a mock British accent, Temple told me, "What you see here is a rebellion. A rebellion against bigger government."

The event also drew intense international interest-more than 200 members of the media are attending, including representatives from 11 countries. Curious Swedish and Japanese reporters mingled with conventioneers in a hall where commemorative T-shirts sold for $20. The T-shirt booth was not the only appearance of capitalism at the conservative gathering: Other entrepreneurs sold $89 sterling silver lapel pins in the shape of tea bags.