Sarah Palin addressed a Tea Party Express rally in Manchester, New Hampshire on Monday, a day after Mitt Romney addressed his first-ever tea party event in the same state.
For Romney, it was a political gamble. As a rule, tea partiers don’t like him much — and some even conspired to embarrass him publicly as he took the tea party mic.
Speaking Monday, Palin seemed to send those tea partiers a message. Romney’s new kowtowing shows you are winning in a big way, she told the crowd. Now don’t blow it.
“We’re seeing more and more folks realize the strength of this grassroots movement, and they’re wanting to be involved,” she said. “I say right on! Better late than never, for some of these candidates especially. You’re converting them over.”
Palin — who of course was right at home among the tea partiers — warned that the kind of public argument with Romney and other tea party groups fighting amongst themselves risked damaging the movement just as it seems poised to fully cleanse the Republican mainstream of anything resembling mainstream GOP ideology.
“We patriots should not focus on petty political squabbles and media-game soundbites,” she said. “The tea party has got to be focused on the broader, much more important goals of this movement: replace Obama and return power back to ‘we the people’ and grow this movement without compromising principles.”
Ironically, Palin just came out of one of the more petty squabbles in recent political history. Organizers of the large tea party event she addressed in Indianola, Iowa last weekend said Team Palin forced them to disinvite former tea party superstar Christine O’Donnell, leading to a comical back-and-forth between all parties that left Palin and the tea party looking less than professional.
But Palin has a point.
It’s true that Democrats — and ratings-watchers in the mainstream media — would love for the tea party to cause the kind of split among the presidential candidates they did in some of 2010’s more spectacular primaries, such as the one that made O’Donnell a household name in the first place. Should tea party natural Rick Perry collapse in the presidential race, leaving Romney back on top of the heap, it would behoove the tea party not to reject him — especially just as he’s begun to actively try to curry favor with them.
Palin told the audience to steer clear of that trap.
“Let’s talk straight about some of the problems in trying to grow this movement, that’s so needed,” she said. “It’s media-incited internal squabbles unfortunately. And we can nip some of that right here in the bud, right here right now. Because we’ve got a lot to do, constitutionalists. Our challengers are too great, we simply don’t have time to be bogged down in friendly fire conflicts.”
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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