'Weird' Tea Party Conventioneers: More Anger Than Answers
"Weird" Tea Party convention-goers "have a lot of anger, they don't have a lot of answers," according to Times staffers.
Host Sam Roberts was joined by chief political reporter Adam Nagourney and reporter Kate Zernike in last Thursday's "Political Points" podcast, hosted at nytimes.com. Just over five minutes into the 16-minute podcast, Roberts spoke to reporter Zernike about her coverage of the recent Tea Party convention in Nashville, and mocked the "fair number of weird people" there:
Sam Roberts: "And what was the Tea party convention like? From the pictures we saw, from the images we saw, seemed like a lot of committed people, also a fair number of weird people or at least weirdly dressed."
Another exchange eight minutes in suggested that Zernike glimpsed pointless anger at the heart of the Tea Party movement:
Sam Roberts: "One of the things you wrote, Kate, the other day was, that if there is any leader to the Tea Party movement, it is Sarah Palin."
Kate Zernike: "Well I think because there's not, there aren't a lot of other candidates. I mean, you know, when I was at the Sarah Palin book signings in November, you saw a lot of people reading Mike Huckabee's book. So I think a lot of these same people like Huckabee, they weren't lining up for Huckabee the way they were lining up for Sarah. But there just aren't a lot of politicians who appeal to them, or who - they have a lot of anger, they don't have a lot of answers."
The idea of "Angry" tea party protesters is a running theme in Times coverage, including Zernike's own stories.
