Please, No More Links To Tea Parties!

How Ex-AK Gov. Palin & other commonsense conservatives plan to run OUR gummint:

Just getting there was a challenge. Some 50 miles south of Las Vegas, Searchlight is a very small town with very few amenities. Its mining boom peaked in 1910, and the town's been pretty slow ever since. Its sole motel has 21 rooms.

Compounding that problem, organizers staged the event about half a mile off the highway, in a secluded ravine accessible only via one dirt road. With thousands of people forced through a single choke point, the traffic jams before and after the event were ridiculous. I rode with three other Las Vegas journalists. We left the city at 8 a.m. It was smooth sailing until 8:52, when we joined the line of vehicles on the highway's shoulder. We finally parked, in a sea of pickup trucks, SUVs and RVs, at 11:04.

Followed by attempts by leftists to mock the Patriots & their clever spelling & grammar, yada yada. How hateful people are, making fun of Americans like that.

And look who's a celebrity now! Isn't that sweet? Just like that Obama fellow now, bless her heart. But that's a mighty small pond she's working in.

Along with the grime, the quality of the warmup speakers quickly ebbed the crowd's initial excitement. One unknown Republican after another took the microphone and tried to fire up the crowd with routine quips and broadsides, all with limited success. It was clear the crowd was interested only in the headliner.

Headliner Palin never having cranked out a routine quip or broadside in her life. She's made style over substance a cliche. Sarah Palin's Alaska, here we come.

Based on Saturday's rally, the Tea Party seems to know what it's against -- socialism, taxes, health care reform -- but it has no clue what it's for. The people are angry, but they struggle to articulate why. For many, it seems, the Tea Party provides a welcoming umbrella for whatever single issue they're fired up about, whether it's immigration, terrorism or the bank bailout.

Some Tea Party officials have said they're fed up with both parties, but as the 2010 election approaches, that sentiment has been squelched, at least in Nevada. Party leaders have shunned a Tea Party candidate, Jon Scott Ashjian, who is running against Harry Reid. The notion of splitting the conservative vote, and thereby allowing Reid to slide into another term, is too much to bear.

Leaving the rally was even more excruciating than our arrival. It took us three mind-numbing hours just to get back to the highway. It seemed like it took forever to pass the port-a-potty festooned with a sign that read, "Harry Reid Donation Center." The most important lesson from the "Showdown in Searchlight" rally was this: If the Tea Party can't show a modicum of competence in controlling traffic, we sure as hell don't want them running the country.

Geoff Schumacher is publisher of CityLife, the alternative newsweekly in Las Vegas, and a political columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Please believe us, we'd reached the conclusion of our opening (& almost only) sentence long before we made it to the end & found that this Schumacher had gotten there about five hrs. ahead of us. (Or we picked up on a telegraphed conclusion almost immediately for a change. It could happen.)

Video courtesy J —, self-commenting, more info at the L.V. Sun, enough already.