Last Chance - Napa Dinner & Super Rally! (Aug 26, 2011)

Dear Friends,

This is an urgent reminder - this is your last chance to sign up for a very special benefit dinner for the Napa Tea Party happening tonight! We hope you'll join us this evening in Napa for a special night filled with amazing food and wine, entertainment, with like-minded patriots. This event will help the Napa Tea Party fund their ongoing battle against the left... and in California, they need all the help they can get!

The dinner is Friday (tonight), from 6pm-11pm, at the Plaza tented lawn area at the Napa Valley Expo. Champagne and hors-de'oeuvres will be served at 6pm; dinner will follow at 7pm.

Tonight's MC is author and nationally renowned black conservative Kevin Jackson. Entertainment will be provided by Bruce Bellott from Nashville and the local Lake County band: Remnant.

The price is $150 per person, or $1,000 for a reserved table for eight. To ensure your reserved seat, please contact Pam Silleman of the Napa Tea Party at PamSilleman@sbcglobal.net or call: (707) 326-4068.

Then, on Saturday morning, Tea Party Express "Super Rally" kicks off at 10am! This huge rally features a powerful lineup of conservative speakers from local & national conservative groups, celebrities like singer/actor Pat Boone, and comedian Jim Labriola from Home Improvement, and will be MC'd by radio stars Armstrong & Getty. We'll have some great food vendors as well as wine and beer tasting for those 21 and older!

Attendance is free... just bring your blanket or lawn chair and the whole family, and we'll see you there!

“As you seem to define yourself as outside the tea party movement”

No I don’t. I define myself as opposed to the Tea Party’s takeover by people who schedule $1,000 per table dinners.”

“the class envy is not unexpected.”

It is regrettable that you were unable to grasp my points. I’ll make one more try: From cradle to grave, Americans resent being told that they’re not as good as the next man. Decades of leftist indoctrination have conditioned many Americans to be on the lookout for signs that “the rich” are excluding them or hosing them over. This kind of event plays right into the leftists’ hands.

“Go to a tea party (one of the ones in an area you approve of)”

All Tea Party functions that I have been able to discover in this area charge admission. After receiving an e-mail from them headed, “A Message from Your President,” I sent them a quite civil e-mail discussing these matters. They didn’t bother to reply, which rather supports my points.

“and ask around if the people attending would like it is all people were on the same finacial level, and you will see that most are glad some people are more monetarily well off than they are.”

That doesn’t even make sense as an insult. Your note, however, demonstrates exactly where the Tea Party is going wrong.

Try to get past your prejudices for just a second and pay attention to what is actually being said. It is not about me; it is not a matter of “class envy;” it is a matter of the emerging Tea Party Elite’s “let them eat cake” attitude.

If it is to thrive, the Tea Party needs to make itself accessable to the many, many people who can’t afford these things.

“Here’s hoping there is a tea party close enough to your home so you can walk their with your ice chest and p&j sammich.”

Gee, thanks so much for the condecension. I guess none of my notes were really about swelling the ranks of the Tea Party. They were all just reflections of the envy that I as a peasant feel for you aristocrats. Of course, I can’t afford an ice chest or pb&j “sammiches,” but maybe I can panhandle enough in the Walmart Parking Lot.

Jerk.

“Sorry reasoned deebate is an insult to you.”

How would you know? You haven’t offered the slightest scintilla of reasoned debate.

“You continue to define ourself as outside the tea party movement.”

No, I continue to define myself as someone who, unlike you, understands human nature to some degree, and again unlike you, understands plain English.

“It’s real easy to see what with your snarky attitude and misconceptions.”

I’ve been about 10 percent as snarky as you, and less insulting even than that.

“I feel your pain”

Bill? Bill Clinton? Is that you?

“you are suffering a lot.”

Well, my forehead is getting a little sore from slapping it every time (1) the Tea Party screws up, and (2) every time you read “Dogs are mammals” and think it means “Lavender hippos are in your roses.”

“So back to square one, you are asking the tea party (a bunch of elite snobs) “to kiss (your) penniless butt.”

Thanks for such a great example of a complete failure to understand your native language.

I spoke of small groups of people who wish to establish themselves as the “Tea Party Elite.” Nowhere did I say that the Tea Party as a whole is a bunch of elite snobs. Neither did I tell the Tea Party to kiss my butt, penniless or otherwise. I wrote, “If I were a disenchanted demonrat looking for a new home, I’d tell them to kiss my penniless butt,” as an illustration of a tactical error the Tea Party is making.

But perhaps you don’t care what I really said. Perhaps you’re just trying to turn this into a mud fight so that people won’t take my criticisms seriously. Certainly you have been trying to make this about me instead of about the Tea Party, and just as certainly you have been trying to provoke me into making an angry and discreditable post.

The sort of person who should be speaking for and organizing within the Tea Party would have addressed my assertions on their merits, rather than immediately making it personal by accusing me of “class envy,” assuming that I would think people at a Tea Party rally would hold socialist opinions on the distribution of wealth, and snidely pretending to hope that “there is a tea party close enough to your home so you can walk their [sic] with your ice chest and p&j [sic] sammich.”

“Walk” because a person like me would of course not have a car, and “p&j sammich” because (1) that’s what a person like me would regard as fine cuisine, and (2) I could not be expected to know who the Earl of Sandwich was, nor to pronounce his name correctly. Just another try at making this about me instead of about the Tea Party.

And you have the astounding gall to say that I have a “snarky attitude?”

“Walmart is a start, good luck!”

Bill and Hillary would heave a contented sigh at your application of the politics of personal destruction.

To quote an earlier note of mine, “You miss the point. It is not about me. It is about the thousands or tens of thousands of people who see talk of thousand-dollar tables as just more proof that Republicans/Tea Party/Conservatives are by, of, and for ‘the rich.’ It is a tactical error, and a serious one.”

Dude!

I really don’t think your complaints make any sense. I went to the Napa TPX kick-off yesterday. It was a very nice event, open to all. It was free to attend and free to park. It was informative, entertaining and fun.

There were all sorts of people there. Nobody gave a rip about how much money anybody else had or how well any of us were doing relative to one another. We were all there because we wanted certain changes in how the government operates. It was democracy and patriotism in action and it was alright.

I think maybe you are letting your personal feelings and situation cloud your judgment about events surrounding you. If you had been in Napa yesterday, you would not have actually seen anything at all that smacked of elitism or exclusion.

No, the tea party movement is not a penniless peasant’s pitchfork brigade. Nor should it be. For a mass popular movement to succeed it must appeal to the things that bind us together and pennilessness isn’t it. This is not China in 1920. This is America. Most people work and have a home and car. We have Saturday off and can get ourselves to a free event. We choose to attend not because we’re poor (even if we are) but because we’re patriots and we love our country and want to protect and serve her.

Lighten up already.

“I really don’t think your complaints make any sense.”

Firstly, they are not complaints. (Trying to make it personal again.) They are assertions that the Tea Party is making tactical errors. Misrepresenting those assertions as “complaints” is missing the point entirely.

Otherwise, your first two paragraphs seem pretty reasonable. However…

“I think maybe you are letting your personal feelings and situation cloud your judgment about events surrounding you.”

Trying to make it personal again. What am I to make of that? Is it that some people are so protective of the Tea Party that they will not brook even constructive criticism? Is it that they are simply tone-deaf to human nature? Is it that they want the Tea Party to be co-opted by the RINO elite?

“If you had been in Napa yesterday, you would not have actually seen anything at all that smacked of elitism or exclusion.”

Sigh. Since you obviously didn’t bother to read and understand what I wrote, let me try again.

I wouldn’t have expected to see anything at the *rally* that “smacked of elitism or exclusion.” One reason for that is that the people who were excluded for economic reasons were not there. That said, you have missed the point again.

It is the association of the Tea Party with $1000-per-table dinners that most definitely smacks of elitism and exclusion. One of the reasons the Tea Party is needed is that the left, on their long march through the institutions, did not make that stupid blunder.

“No, the tea party movement is not a penniless peasant’s pitchfork brigade. Nor should it be.”

So, people who lack sufficient income or property are not invited? Don’t need them? Footman, clear this rabble away from my coach! I’m late for Her Majesty’s soirée.

Huge mistake. Huge.

Fifty percent of Americans don’t pay *any* income tax. But they can vote. Are the people who have appointed themselves the leadership of the Tea Party going to start by writing off fifty percent of the voters? Not just failing to reach out to them, but playing right into stereotypes?

“For a mass popular movement to succeed it must appeal to the things that bind us together and pennilessness isn’t it.”

That’s so bad, it’s not even wrong. Don’t you get that the way the left has kept power and has done so much harm to the United States is by keeping the poor from realizing that conservatism is the way to prosperity? The Tea Party needs to persuade as many demonrat voters as possible that leftism leads only to poverty.

“This is not China in 1920. This is America. Most people work and have a home and car.”

Most, perhaps. However, actual unemployment is much closer to thirty percent than it is to nine. Many are underemployed. Inflation and taxes have eaten up purchasing power. It now takes two incomes to maintain a standard of living that one income provided forty years ago. For that matter, two might not be enough. I suggest that you have not troubled to get a clear picture of the changes that have taken place.

“We have Saturday off”

Many can no longer afford that. Far fewer than twenty or thirty years ago.

“and can get ourselves to a free event.”

Congratulations. Many would think, “Can I afford that gasoline and the related costs? I’m barely getting to work and back from paycheck to paycheck as it is. And shouldn’t the kids’ school clothes and groceries come first?”

The Tea Party would be hideously foolish to ignore or offend those people. Many are probably ready to come over from the dark side.

“We choose to attend not because we’re poor (even if we are) but because we’re patriots”

What in the world kind of sense is that supposed to make? No one has suggested that anyone would choose to attend *because* they are poor. I have asserted that the Tea Party needs to be accessible—and to appear accessible—to those who are beset by the vicissitudes of life. Advertising $1,000-per-table dinners side-by-side with rally announcements drives a stake right through the heart of accessibility. Many of the people that the Tea Party *needs* to win over *will* see that as elitist and exclusionary.

“we love our country and want to protect and serve her.”

And those who would rather—at this particular point in history—feed their children and have enough gas to get to work rather than attend a rally in the wine country do not love their country and do not want to protect and serve her. Got it. I’ll call the Navy and tell them to stop my pension.

“Lighten up already.”

Lighten up? Moi? I started with a short note asserting that associating $1,000-per-table dinners with the Tea Party was a tactical error. I had some rational exchanges with a poster or two, but one decided to try and make it personal, in part by misinterpreting my remarks and being insulting.

I think the need to lighten up rests elsewhere.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.