Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, has scored a 2012 coup of sorts: He will be the keynote speaker at the first Tea Party Policy Summit in Arizona this month.

In a release Friday morning, the Tea Party Patriots announced that Mr. Pawlenty, who is actively considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, will address the group, along with Representative Ron Paul of Texas and other conservative politicians and activists.

“With more than 3,000 affiliated organizations across the county, this summit will be an important opportunity for Tea Party Patriots to come together to celebrate and recommit to the ideals and values that are responsible for the dramatic victories in the November election,” Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, said in a statement.

As the Republican presidential nomination fight gets under way, many of the potential candidates are eagerly vying for the attention and support of Tea Party groups, who emerged in 2010 as a powerful force in elective politics.

Mr. Pawlenty remains largely unknown around the country, and has been seeking to raise his profile with a nationwide tour to promote his new book, “Courage to Stand.” A political memoir, the book details his eight years as governor.

“This Tea Party group is a great champion for tax and spending cuts — something Governor Pawlenty feels strongly about,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for Mr. Pawlenty. “Governor Pawlenty is looking forward to sharing his lessons learned from winning tough battles with the liberals and public employees’ unions in Minnesota.”

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

The first issue of the Tea Party Review, which describes itself as “the first national magazine for, by, and about the Tea Party movement,” will make its debut during the Conservative Political Action Conference scheduled to begin in Washington on Thursday.

“People are weary of the distorted version of the Tea Party movement that we see in most of the media,” said Katrina Pierson, a member of the Dallas Tea Party and the “national grassroots director” for the new magazine. “Throughout American history, successful movements — abolitionists, women’s suffragists, the civil rights movement, the conservative movement, et cetera — all had their own print publications.”

The monthly magazine, which will charge $34.95 for an annual subscription, comes from Higher Standard Publishers, a movement-oriented publishing house behind conservative titles like, “Confessions of a Black Conservative,” and a children’s book called, “Help, Mom! Radicals are Ruining My Country!”

Last week, another organization, called the Tea Party News Brief launched a Web site from offices in Des Moines claiming to be “the nation’s first nonpartisan news service for the Tea Party Movement.”

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

The Democratic Party announced Tuesday that Charlotte, N.C., will be the site of its 2012 national convention, with the city winning out over St. Louis, Minneapolis and Cleveland as the place to formally kick off President Obama’s re-election bid.

Mr. Obama, who plans to accept the Democratic nomination at the convention, signed off on the choice after party officials made recommendations from four finalist cities that have been locked in an intense competition for months. The convention is set to begin Sept. 3, 2012.

The selection of Charlotte underscores the belief of Mr. Obama and his advisers that they can compete – and win – in a Southern state. In the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama won the primary election and went on to become the first Democratic candidate since Jimmy Carter to carry North Carolina in the general election by building a coalition of black voters and many of the state’s new residents who have been drawn to North Carolina because of banking and high-tech jobs.

The announcement was formally made on Tuesday by the first lady, Michelle Obama, in an e-mail to members of Organizing for America, the network of supporters from the 2008 campaign.

“Charlotte is a city marked by its Southern charm, warm hospitality and an ‘up by the bootstraps’ mentality that has propelled the city forward as one of the fastest-growing in the South,” Mrs. Obama wrote. “Vibrant, diverse, and full of opportunity, the Queen City is home to innovative, hardworking folks with big hearts and open minds. And of course, great barbecue.”

The Republican Party announced last year that it would host its convention in Tampa, Fla., giving the influential battleground state of Florida a critical role in the presidential race. Mr. Obama also carried Florida in 2008, but Republicans swept key statewide elections in 2010, so the state’s electoral votes will be among the most coveted in the country.

The Democratic Party’s selection among the four top contenders was guided not only by which city had the best ability to host a major convention, party officials said, but also as a signal for where Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign will aggressively compete in 2012. In addition to narrowly winning North Carolina in 2008, the president also carried Minnesota and Ohio, but lost Missouri.

“We’re looking at an expanding map rather than shrinking back to husband our resources and play defense,” said Tim Kaine, the Democratic National Committee’s chairman. “We were very excited about winning North Carolina in 2008. Putting our convention there is very serious sign that we intend to compete there again.”

“We’re glad to be in the South,” Mr. Kaine said in an interview, adding that the proximity of Virginia, which Mr. Obama also carried in 2008, was an important factor in choosing North Carolina.

To win the convention, Charlotte coined the slogan “Reaching for Tomorrow,” which is intended to symbolize the changing face of the Southern city that is now the country’s second-largest banking center. Democratic officials in Washington debated whether that was the image they were seeking to begin the 2012 campaign, but the president’s surprise win in North Carolina in 2008 underscored the population shifts under way in the state.

North Carolina is a right-to-work state, and Charlotte has no union hotels, which was another point of contention among some Democratic constituencies.

While St. Louis has hosted four Democratic national conventions, and was recommended by Unite Here, the hotel workers’ union, for having the most unionized facilities, there were several other objections raised about the city.

Missouri, which once was considered a critical battleground state, has slipped out of the Democratic Party’s reach in recent presidential elections and it remains an open question whether Mr. Obama will heavily compete in the state in 2012.

One of the country’s most competitive United States Senate races is also taking place in Missouri, with Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, is being heavily focused on by Republicans as she seeks re-election to a second term.

Ms. McCaskill, one of the president’s closest friends in the Senate, took her concerns directly to the White House, according to party leaders familiar with the selection process. She argued that her re-election could be complicated if the convention was held in St. Louis, because the Democratic gathering will almost certainly attract protesters and compete for fund-raising.

The bid for Minneapolis was complicated by the collapse of the roof at the Metrodome late last year during a snowstorm, officials said, while Cleveland was always considered a long-shot because of the limited hotel rooms in the downtown area of the city.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

One measure of the intensity of the 2010 midterm election is that all of the major party organizations enter the next two years burdened with millions of dollars in debt even as they ramp up for presidential-year campaigns.

The Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, officially acknowledged the bad news in a letter to supporters Monday, saying that his organization is saddled with more than $23 million in debt and less than $750,000 in cash on hand.

“We have our work cut out for us, but I am confident we will succeed in turning around the R.N.C. through hard work, transparency and honesty with our hardworking grass-roots activists and donors,” said Mr. Priebus, who recently succeeded the former chairman Michael Steele to lead the Republican Party.

The National Republican Campaign Committee, which oversees Republican House races, was $10.5 million in debt at the end of last year. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which supports Republican Senate candidates, ended the year with $6.5 million in debt.

The Democratic National Committee ended up in a better position than their counterparts. They start the year with $16 million of debt but $6 million in cash on hand.

But the two Democratic committees aimed at supporting their candidates in the House and Senate also have to pay off significant debts as they begin the 2012 campaign cycle.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has $19 million in debts after trying unsuccessfully to defend their majority in the House last year. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ended with $8.8 million in debts after succeeding in preventing a Republican takeover in the Senate.

The end-of-the-year finances for the political groups were reported to the Federal Election Commission at the end of January. Representatives from both sides sought to spin the results in their favor.

“One of the reasons we were able to beat back the Republican wave last cycle is because we outraised the other side,” said Guy Cecil, the executive director of the D.S.C.C. “Despite Republicans enjoying national momentum, we were able to amass the resources needed to wage aggressive campaigns in targeted states.”

Rob Jesmer, the executive director of the N.R.S.C. pointed out that his group came much closer to matching Democratic fund-raising in 2010 than they did in 2008.

“It’s amusing, to say the least, to see Senate Democrats cite their fund-raising as the reason they only lost seven seats when their previous fund-raising advantage was eroded by $57 million in the 2010 cycle, despite having far more senators and the fund-raiser-in-chief in the White House,” Mr. Jesmer said.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Some of the Tea Party’s most prominent candidates never made it to Washington (think Christine “I am not a witch” O’Donnell of Delaware), but the movement that perhaps best embodied the anti-incumbent sentiment of 2010 has nonetheless gained a toehold in the upper chamber of Congress. And on Thursday it became official: Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the Tea Party patron, and the freshmen senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah held the first official gathering of the Senate Tea Party Caucus.

But other newly elected Republican senators have refused to join, including some who had Tea Party support in the fall campaign, like Senators Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, Kelly A. Ayotte of New Hampshire, and Marco Rubio of Florida. And Mr. DeMint, who has been flirting with the idea of a presidential run, was the only nonfreshman senator to sign on.

With its small membership, the Tea Party Caucus amounts to fewer than 10 percent of Republicans in the Senate, making it a minority within the minority.

Mr. Lee, in an interview on CNN, said size did not matter.

“It’s a relatively small group at this point, and I don’t necessarily think it needs to be big,” Mr. Lee said. “We’re not intending this to be a full-blown, influential caucus. We’re intending this to be a conduit for information to pass between individuals who sympathize with the Tea Party movement and the United States Senate.”

Mr. Lee added, “In time, it may grow.”

The House Tea Party Caucus, led by Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, held its first event late last year.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

It is a Washington tradition that on the night the president gives his annual address to Congress, a member of the opposition gives a formal response. Tonight, there will be an opposition to the opposition response.

Representative Michele Bachmann, who has styled herself as the leader of the Tea Party movement within the House, plans to give her own rebuttal to President Obama’s speech following the official reply given by Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Mr. Ryan has become a focus of attention for members of both parties because of the unusual powers granted to him in the budget process that has commenced on the Hill, and because he is the author of the Republican fiscal road map, a budget alternative to what Democrats have on the table.

But Ms. Bachmann had proven herself a potent force all on her own, making the rounds on conservative talk shows and speaking for the more conservative corner of the Republican caucus, which has increased with scores of new members elected last November. Ms. Bachmann is expected to attack the President’s speech and make a case for fiscal discipline, a theme of the Tea Party and Republicans generally.

“Thanks to all of you, there’s reason to hope that real spending cuts are coming,” Ms. Bachmann plans to say, according to excerpts from her prepared remarks distributed to reporters. “Last November many of you went to the polls and voted out big-spending politicians, and you put in their place men and women who have come to Washington with a commitment to follow the Constitution and cut the size of government. And I believe that we are in the early days of a history-making turn here in the House of Representatives.

“Last week we voted to repeal ObamaCare, and each day going forward, we must work hard to dismantle the massive government expansion that has happened over the past two years.”

Ms. Bachmann said Monday that her speech was “not a competition” with Mr. Ryan, who is now sandwiched between the President and his own colleague. But the existence of her alternate response, which was not officially sanctioned by Republicans in the House, did not go unnoticed.

The Republican majority leader, Eric Cantor, told reporters on Monday: “Paul Ryan’s giving the official Republican response. And Michele Bachmann, just as the other 534 members of the House and Senate, are going to have opinions as to the State of the Union. Again, this is a process that happens every year, and I look forward to all comments, but it’s Paul Ryan that’s giving the official Republican [response].”

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, meanwhile, said in an interview on MSNBC: “I’ve never seen, in the 20 years I’ve been involved in the political process, that there has been more than one response to either side’s presidential State of the Union address. We have differing opinions in the Democratic Party, but we don’t have a Blue Dog response. We don’t have a progressive response. We have the State of the Union, and then we have the Democratic response when there’s a Republican president. So I think it shows the deep divisions that exist and that the Republicans are really not able to be on the same page, and it’s shades of things to come as they move forward.”

Ms. Bachmann, whose own party has rebuffed her in the House by denying her the committees and leadership positions she has sought, acknowledged on the Bill O’Reilly program Monday night that her response was more or less her own. “I am not the official GOP response,” she said. “That will belong to Paul Ryan. I am sure he will do a wonderful job. About a month ago, the Tea Party Express asked if I would speak to their membership about President Obama’s remarks, and I am looking forward to doing that.”

Only CNN has said will carry the congresswoman’s remarks live and in their entirety; however, the Tea Party Express plans to live-stream her speech on its Web site.

“The Tea Party has become a major force in American politics and within the Republican Party,” Sam Feist, CNN’s political director and vice president of Washington-based programming, said in an announcement of the station’s plans. “Hearing the Tea Party’s perspective on the State of the Union is something we believe CNN’s viewers will be interested in hearing and we are happy to include this perspective as one of many in tonight’s coverage.”

Ms. Bachmann has hinted that she may throw her name in the ring for the 2012 presidential race, but has so far demurred from a full declaration. This week she played hostess to the first in what she said will be a series of “constitutional seminars” with legal experts. On Monday Justice Antonin Scalia of the gave a seminar to roughly 30 members of the House.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

If Republicans reject Michael Steele as chairman of their party Friday afternoon, as seems likely, it will represent a 180-degree turn from their approach just two years ago.

In January 2009, as President Obama settled into the Oval Office, Republicans chose a charismatic African-American to be a very public face of the party.

But now, two years later, the Republican National Committee seems poised to select a virtual nobody from a group of white party activists who have each pledged to burrow into just one task: raising money.

The decision will be made Friday afternoon in a series of votes by the committee’s 168 members at its winter meeting in Maryland.

Mr. Steele is fighting to stay, but party officials told my colleague Jeff Zeleny on Thursday that they saw little chance he would succeed. That is in part because of a series of gaffes by Mr. Steele and accusations about financial mismanagement under his watch that has left the committee in debt going into a presidential election cycle.

But it’s also true that the Republican Party — and Mr. Obama — are in different places than they were two years ago when Mr. Steele was chosen.

In 2009, Mr. Obama was ascendant, having taken office as the nation’s first black president after a thorough drubbing of Senator John McCain of Arizona. Mr. Obama’s approval rating was in the mid-60s in the weeks after his inauguration.

At the time, Republicans were completely out of power, having lost the House and the Senate to Democrats two years earlier. They needed someone who could reach out, especially to minorities, and broaden the party’s appeal.

“It’s time for something completely different, and we’re going to bring it to them,” Mr. Steele said at the time. “We’re going to bring this party to every corner, to every boardroom, to every neighborhood, to every community. And we’re going to say to friend and foe alike: ‘We want you to be a part of us. We want you to be with us, and for those of you who are going to obstruct, get ready to be knocked over.’ ”

But now, the relative positions of the parties are different.

Republicans have taken back the House, putting Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio into the Speaker’s office and making him a natural focus of attention as the highest-elected Republican in the land.

And within months, there will be as many as a dozen candidates officially vying for the Republican presidential nomination. By the middle of 2012, there will be a Republican nominee to officially represent the party in its battle to take back the White House from Mr. Obama.

Meanwhile, Mr. Obama is not in the same place, politically, that he was at the time of his inauguration.

He has had a few strong weeks, logging a number of political victories in the lame-duck session of Congress and receiving fairly universal support for his speech at Wednesday’s memorial service for the victims of the Arizona shootings. But his approval rating hovers around 50 percent. And the midterm elections last year proved that he and his party are politically vulnerable.

One of the lessons of those midterm elections was that money matters. Democrats were hammered by tens of millions of dollars raised by outside, independent groups who helped to defeat marginal candidates running in tough districts.

Mr. Steele’s four rivals have promised to make fund-raising their priority, recognizing the possibilities that exist if the party apparatus joins the outside groups in effectively tapping the money that is out there to win the presidency back.

They will need to. The committee is now more than $20 million in debt, and many large Republican donors have made it clear that they will not give money to the committee unless they have more confidence in the leadership.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, is planning to raise in the neighborhood of $1 billion for his re-election campaign.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

One day after former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska declined to throw her hat into the ring to become the Tea Party movement’s choice to lead the Republican National Committee, a leading Tea Party group threw its support behind Saul Anuzis of Michigan.

Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, announced in a statement on Tuesday that he was supporting Mr. Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. Mr. Phillips said the leadership race was a critical “battle for the heart and soul” of the party.

“Capturing the chairmanship of the R.N.C. is important to the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Phillips wrote in a letter to the members of his group, one of the largest Tea Party organizations in the country. He added: “We need a conservative in as chair of the R.N.C. If not, we will end up with the same class of G.O.P. knuckleheads that blew it so badly in 2006 and 2008.”

The fight for control of the Republican National Committee has highlighted the tensions and divisions between members of the party’s establishment and newly emboldened activists within the Tea Party movement.

The current chairman, Michael Steele, has not yet said whether he intends to seek a second term, but at least half a dozen potential candidates are said to be ready to run. The outcome of the chairman’s race, which will be determined by the 168 members of the national committee, will offer a window into how the uneasy alliance of the coalitions inside the Republican Party plays out.

The Tea Party Nation does not have a formal vote and it remains an open question how many members of the committee will take their cues from Tea Party leaders. But each of the potential candidates to lead the Republican National Committee are courting support from Tea Party activists.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, became the latest contender for national chairman. A former ally of Mr. Steele, he announced his intention to seek the position in a video message and letter to members of the committee on Monday.

“If you’re looking for someone with an inflated ego or a person who thinks they know it all, that’s not me,” Mr. Priebus said in a video message. “But if you want a conservative who isn’t afraid to stand on principle, be a gracious and inclusive leader and isn’t afraid of hard work, I’d be honored to serve.”

Other potential candidates for the top Republican job include: Gentry Collins, the former political director at the Republican National Committee; Ann Wagner, a longtime Missouri Republican who served as an ambassador to Luxembourg in the Bush administration; Maria Cino, a former Bush administration official, who is supported by former Vice President Dick Cheney; and Mike Duncan, who preceded Mr. Steele as party chairman.

The committee will elect its next leader at its winter meeting in January.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

One day after former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska declined to throw her hat into the ring to become the Tea Party movement’s choice to lead the Republican National Committee, a leading Tea Party group threw its support behind Saul Anuzis of Michigan.

Judson Phillips, the founder of Tea Party Nation, announced in a statement on Tuesday that he was supporting Mr. Anuzis, a former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. Mr. Phillips said the leadership race was a critical “battle for the heart and soul” of the party.

“Capturing the chairmanship of the R.N.C. is important to the Tea Party movement,” Mr. Phillips wrote in a letter to the members of his group, one of the largest Tea Party organizations in the country. He added: “We need a conservative in as chair of the R.N.C. If not, we will end up with the same class of G.O.P. knuckleheads that blew it so badly in 2006 and 2008.”

The fight for control of the Republican National Committee has highlighted the tensions and divisions between members of the party’s establishment and newly emboldened activists within the Tea Party movement.

The current chairman, Michael Steele, has not yet said whether he intends to seek a second term, but at least half a dozen potential candidates are said to be ready to run. The outcome of the chairman’s race, which will be determined by the 168 members of the national committee, will offer a window into how the uneasy alliance of the coalitions inside the Republican Party plays out.

The Tea Party Nation does not have a formal vote and it remains an open question how many members of the committee will take their cues from Tea Party leaders. But each of the potential candidates to lead the Republican National Committee are courting support from Tea Party activists.

Reince Priebus, chairman of the Wisconsin Republican Party, became the latest contender for national chairman. A former ally of Mr. Steele, he announced his intention to seek the position in a video message and letter to members of the committee on Monday.

“If you’re looking for someone with an inflated ego or a person who thinks they know it all, that’s not me,” Mr. Priebus said in a video message. “But if you want a conservative who isn’t afraid to stand on principle, be a gracious and inclusive leader and isn’t afraid of hard work, I’d be honored to serve.”

Other potential candidates for the top Republican job include: Gentry Collins, the former political director at the Republican National Committee; Ann Wagner, a longtime Missouri Republican who served as an ambassador to Luxembourg in the Bush administration; Maria Cino, a former Bush administration official, who is supported by former Vice President Dick Cheney; and Mike Duncan, who preceded Mr. Steele as party chairman.

The committee will elect its next leader at its winter meeting in January.

View the original article here

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.