I really wanted to attend this when it was announced. I had just been to Nashville for the Smart Girl Politics Summit and had a great time. When another event was announced, and SGP was going to be there again, I looked to see how much it would cost.
There was no way I could afford that. It’s a ridiculous price. CPAC is $175 and that is still a chunk of change (donate today, thanks).
So, when you have a nationwide movement of hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million motivated conservatives, setting the price of admission so high they can’t afford it is asinine. It results in less than a thousand people attending the convention:
Nearly 600 conservative activists, ranging from the energized to the eclectic, have convened in Nashville, Tenn., for the first-ever National Tea Party Convention, angry at Democrats and Republicans alike.
Really. This is a pitiful showing and I don’t put the blame on the tea party activists. I put it firmly on the shoulders of the organizers. This is a grass roots movement. These are not rich folks who can afford to drop a pile of loot on a three day conference.
When I was writing for American Issues Project, I wrote about how Sam Walton created Wal-Mart. He bought huge amounts of items like panties, then sold them so cheap he only made a few cents on each sale. But there were so many sales, it resulted in quite a bit of profit.
If we count the number of attendees at 600, multiplied by $550 each in registration, that totals $165,000. If they had made the price more reasonable, say, $150, they could have drawn in five or six thousand. That’s over $750,000.
I would have gone if the price were $150. I don’t know how I would have paid for it, but I would have gone.
Instead, I stayed home because I was simply priced out of attendance, as I imagine so many others were. It’s a shame, because the number in attendance will be spun into showing a lack of numbers in the movement.
Update:
If you think I’m off the mark by suggesting 5,000 people would have attended, consider that 500 people stood outside the Michigan capitol in the freezing cold to protest Governor Jennifer Grandholm. They didn’t even get a bag of swag. They didn’t get to see Sarah Palin.
They got cold toes.
