No hard feelings.<\/p>\n
That’s what Judson Phillips, organizer of the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, says about the decision of two prominent conservative congresswomen to pull out of the event just days before it started.<\/p>\n
“It’s a non-issue,” Phillips told FoxNews.com, as the convention got under way Thursday afternoon inside the sprawling hotel oasis known as the Gaylord Opryland.<\/p>\n
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., were originally set to speak at the first-ever convention of tea partiers, but the two decided to cancel after a House ethics committee review raised questions about the way profits from the event would be used. The event sponsor, Phillips’ Tea Party Nation, is a for-profit company.<\/p>\n
No sweat, Phillips said.<\/p>\n
“They’re still two of my favorite people, so we’ve got no issue with that,” he said.<\/p>\n
Phillips said Bachmann and Blackburn both called him “personally” to convey their support for the event despite their withdrawal. It’s for the best, he argued.<\/p>\n
“I think they were being set up and I agree 100 percent with their decision, because I didn’t want to get dragged up to Washington to be a witness at a show trial,” Phillips said.<\/p>\n
The prelude to the first-ever tea party convention was not without its hiccups.<\/p>\n
Aside from the Blackburn-Bachmann pullout, some activists raised questions about the high price of the affair — $549 for the whole convention and $349 to just see Sarah Palin, who is still scheduled to speak on closing night. Other sponsors and participants canceled as well.<\/p>\n
Phillips was not so forgiving in discussing the decision of American Liberty Alliance to pull its support last month.<\/p>\n
“That was a really odd situation,” he said. “They kind of pulled that stunt.”<\/p>\n
On its Web site, American Liberty Alliance has questioned how the profits from the event will be used. In a posting a few days ago, the group said any attempt by the convention organizers to “point fingers” at those who backed out is “unfortunate, and reconfirms our original suspicions about the nature of those putting the event together.”<\/p>\n
As for the pricey nature of the convention, Phillips tried to justify it.<\/p>\n
“We’re trying to put on a really spectacular event for the people who are here,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
No hard feelings. That’s what Judson Phillips, organizer of the National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, says about the decision of two prominent conservative congresswomen to pull out of the event just days before it started. “It’s a non-issue,” Phillips told FoxNews.com, as the convention got under way Thursday afternoon inside the sprawling hotel oasis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5227,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5227"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278168\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}