Sara Palin Is The Tea Party Queen

While the Republican party struggles to find its identity and a defining figure to lead it, with moderates and conservatives fighting for the soul of the party, the Tea Party knows who it is and who their leader is - Sarah Palin.

Not only will Sarah Palin be the keynote speaker at the Tea Party convention in Nashville this weekend, but now she will be the headliner for a 42 city bus tour to support Conservative candidates.

The Washington Post has the details:

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin will headline a "tea party" rally next month in Searchlight, Nev., the home town of embattled Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), tea party movement organizers said.

The March 27 Nevada event will kick off the Tea Party Express's 42-city bus tour, which will end April 15 with what organizers are billing as a major march on Washington. In addition to the Searchlight rally, Palin will headline a tour stop in Boston on April 14, said Mark Williams, chairman of Tea Party Express.

Reid responded to Palin in a statement to The Post: "Make sure you stop by the Nugget for a ten-cent cup of coffee with free refills -- and make sure to say 'Hi' to Verlie."

By beginning the tour in Searchlight, Reid's rural home town 60 miles from Las Vegas, the grassroots tea party movement is going straight at the heart of Reid's scrappy up-from-the-bootstraps narrative. The move is part of a wave of conservative efforts to oust the top Senate Democrat, who is up for reelection in November.

"We're going to prepare a new home for him back there on the old farm," Williams, who also is a radio talk show host, said in an interview Tuesday.

Palin is being paid a reported $100,000 for speaking at the Nashville convention, which has drawn criticism from leaders inside and outside the tea party movement. But Williams said Palin will not be paid speaking fees for her appearances in Searchlight and Boston.

"This is her coming along for political purposes," Williams said. "She's going to help us do what we do, which is the guerilla gathering of free media. This is politics."

Sarah Palin first mentioned that she would be part of the tour in an Op-Ed piece for USA Today entitled "Why I'm Speaking At the Tea Party Convention."

Later this week I'll head toNashville, where I'll have the honor of speaking with members of the Tea Party movement. I look forward to meeting many Americans who share a commitment to limited government, common sense and personal responsibility. This movement is truly a grassroots, organic effort. It's not a top-down organization; it's a ground-up call to action that already has both political parties rethinking the way they do business.

From the town halls last summer to the protests and marches in the fall to the game-changing recent elections, it has been inspiring to see real people — not politicos or inside-the-Beltway professionals — speak out for common-sense conservative policies and values. As with all grassroots efforts, the nature of this movement means that sometimes the debates are loud and the organization is messier than that of a polished, controlled machine. Legitimate disagreements take place about tone and tactics. That's OK, because this movement is about bigger things than politics or organizers.

The soul of the Tea Party is the people who belong to it — everyday Americans who grow our food, run our small businesses, teach our children how to read, serve the less fortunate and fight our wars. They're folks in small towns and cities across this nation who saw what was happening to our country and decided to get involved. Thank God for them. Many of these good Americans had never been involved in their government before, but now they attend town hall meetings and participate in online forums. They write letters to the editor. They sign up to be precinct leaders and run for local office and support other independent patriots. They have the courage to stand up and speak out.

Their vision is what drew me to the Tea Party movement. They believe in the same principles that guided my work in public service — whether I was working on the PTA and city council or serving as a mayor, commissioner or governor. I look forward to meeting some of these great Americans this weekend.

Recently, some have tried to portray this movement as a commercial endeavor rather than the grassroots uprising that it is. Those who do so don't understand the frustration everyday Americans feel when they see their government mortgaging their children's future with reckless spending. The spark of patriotic indignation that inspired those who fought for our independence and those who marched peacefully for civil rights has ignited once again. You can't buy such a sentiment. You can't AstroTurf it. It springs from love of country and the knowledge that we can make a difference if we just stand up and stand together.

I thought long and hard about my participation in this weekend's event. At the end of the day, my decision came down to this: It's important to keep faith with people who put a little bit of their faith in you. Everyone attending this event is a soldier in the cause. Some of them will be driving hundreds of miles to Nashville. I made a commitment to them to be there, and I am going to honor it.

But participation won't be limited to those in Nashville who have a ticket. It's much bigger than that. Because the Tea Party movement is spread out across the country — with no central offices or annual events — this is an opportunity to connect with like-minded folks. Yes, there will be speeches given in a room in Nashville. But we'll also be speaking with thousands of Americans watching online at twitter.com/SarahPalinUSA, or through various news outlets. And the conversation will continue on my Facebook page.

I will not benefit financially from speaking at this event. My only goal is to support the grassroots activists who are fighting for responsible, limited government — and our Constitution. In that spirit, any compensation for my appearance will go right back to the cause.

The nature of the Tea Party movement means there may never be a "perfectly orchestrated" event: Democracy in action doesn't come with a manual. But we must not get caught up in the politics or the controversies that some hope will distract from the heart of the movement. The focus must remain on our ideas and beliefs, and on supporting those ideas and beliefs however we can.

This weekend, it's Nashville, but in March, I'll head to Searchlight, Nev., for the kickoff rally at the Tea Party Express III. In April, I'll be in Boston for a Tea Party gathering there. Across the country, tea-partiers will be sharing our vision for America's future, a vision that promotes common sense solutions to out-of-control spending and an out-of-touch political establishment.

The process may not always be pretty or perfect, but the message is loud and clear: We want a government worthy of the fine Americans that it serves. And we're going to keep spreading that message one convention, one town hall, one speech and one election at a time.