"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 [1]" 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 [2].