Free Republic

They will proudly boast of how they have galvanised ordinary Americans against runaway government spending, but a dark underbelly of xenophobia has been exposed at the first national gathering of the Tea Party movement... The anti-Government, anti-Establishment movement, which has splintered in the past week with many boycotting this gathering, has billed itself as a revolution born of the widespread disgust at Washington and the way that the nation’s politicians are bankrupting America’s future. Yet the speech that opened the Nashville event yesterday, an address greeted with whoops and cheers from the mainly white audience, reflects a movement that also...

If you read any of the extensive coverage of the Tea Party Convention going on this weekend in Nashville, TN, be prepared for dramatic stories of rampant grassroots infighting, questionable convention finances, and radical convention-goers flocking after polarizing demagogues. The real story? Much different. Attendees are wildly enthusiastic, not just about speakers, but about ideas. Those ideas are focused almost exclusively on basic conservative principles like limited government and fiscal responsibility (not the Obama birther conspiracy). And attendees are barely aware of the criticism that has been launched at the Tea Party Convention by mainstream media outlets. "It's a good...