Strange, that: the baggies sure demanded their share of "earned media" in August via congressional town meetings.
The pricing is contradictory, too. For a "grass roots" movement, the tariff is decidedly astroturffy:
The party isn’t cheap: Three days of seminars leading up to Saturday night’s surf and turf banquet and Palin’s after-dinner speech costs $549 (the price tag for seeing Palin alone: $349). On the menu for the three-day affair: something called rainbow salad, flourless dark Venezuelan chocolate cake (thanks, Hugo Chavez!)—and “bananamisu,” a variation on the Italian staple, tiramisu. Throw in three nights at the Gaylord Opryland Hotel, and the stay will cost $900 minimum—and that doesn’t include transportation costs. Palin herself is rumored to be pulling in a cool $100,000 for her keynote address.
Tea Party Nation’s Judson Phillips, who did not return repeated phone calls from The Daily Beast, seems to anticipate how such expenses could make for bad PR. He writes on the convention Web site, “Fifty people in a small Tea Party group for example each investing $10-$20 would take care of most of the costs to a delegate. This is not a huge investment money but information wise it will yield huge returns.”
Says Brandon of FreedomWorks: “This is a recession. Some folks are going to find it prohibitively expensive.”Strangely, Senator Jim DeMint is not listed as a speaker at the gathering of the movement he tries to lead by following.
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