Clash of the Tea Party Travel Agents

August 9, 2010 2:42 PM

There is a bitter feud between the two women who are trying to gain supremacy in the battle to make all of the Tea Party's travel arrangements.
posted by reenum (64 comments total)

This just in: proponents of competition and free markets are big, fat hypocrites.
posted by joe lisboa at 2:46 PM on August 9, 2010 [15 favorites]

The decisive blow to Griffing will come when Drawdy lists, under "payment methods," gold bullion.
posted by adipocere at 2:48 PM on August 9, 2010 [10 favorites]

Which Tea Party are they talking about, I think there is 3 or 4 of them by now, if not more... it's really crossing over into Monty Python territory
posted by edgeways at 2:49 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Man this Tea Party thing has turned into big business! Gotta get me a piece of the action!
posted by Big_B at 2:51 PM on August 9, 2010

"Follow the money." -Tea Throat
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:53 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Meanwhile, in Maine.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:54 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

If it helps DC hotels charge the Tea Partiers exorbitant rates, I'm all for it.
posted by Ella Fynoe at 2:57 PM on August 9, 2010 [6 favorites]

all of the Tea Party's travel arrangements.

You mean they're helping them book a one-way ticket to irrelevance?
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 2:58 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

I mean... you assemble a group of paranoids in the same room, what do you expect? When you get to a certain level the most crazy and charismatic rise to the top. I think this also happens a lot in left fringe organizations as well.
posted by codacorolla at 2:58 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

So who gets the reimbursements from FOX?
posted by Artw at 3:00 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

This is like watching two of the most unpopular girls in school fighting over who gets to help the school bully do his homework.
posted by jabberjaw at 3:01 PM on August 9, 2010 [38 favorites]

Clash of the Tea Party Travel Agents

<liam neeson>
RE-LEASE THE CRACKPOT!
</liam neeson>
posted by PlusDistance at 3:02 PM on August 9, 2010 [20 favorites]

I think this also happens a lot in left fringe organizations as well.

Except those organizations don't get any attention from the media. But the Tea Party is all press; indeed, as I've said before, there's nothing organic about how it arose: it's a PR front for Fox News masquerading as a grass roots organization.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 3:06 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

It has come to the point that when I merely hear or read the term "Tea Party" I experience a distinct physical reaction similar to being served a plate of rancid revulsion served with a side dish of anger.
posted by HuronBob at 3:07 PM on August 9, 2010 [4 favorites]

So who gets the reimbursements from FOX?

Just send the falafel bill to, uh, Bill. He's in charge of petty
cash.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:09 PM on August 9, 2010

Gosh, it's almost like people catering to irrationally angry people with short fuses who engage in petty and vindictive games with a minimum of factual information don't behave in a civil... wait, I forgot if I was talking about the travel agents in particular or the Tea Partiers in general....

Also: ...when Rhode Island travel agent Joanne Griffing lost her job in the recession. At risk of losing her house, she grew desperate. She signed up to take in foster children

Maybe I'm being really unfair here, I but this feels more than a little sleazy. Her finances are in ruin and she puts more lives at risk to cover herself? I don't know, bringing kids already in need of help into an environment on the brink of failure as a solution just seems like recipe for disaster.
posted by quin at 3:10 PM on August 9, 2010 [10 favorites]

In related news: The tea party's growing money problem.
posted by ericb at 3:10 PM on August 9, 2010

Has the Tea Party 'Collapsed'?
posted by ericb at 3:14 PM on August 9, 2010

I must admit I enjoyed reading every word of this. Stirs a memory (must dig up my LOTR books to find it) of a great comment by Sam when two orcs battle each other to death, about hoping more of this lovely behavior spreads in Mordor.
posted by bearwife at 3:16 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

"La révolution dévore ses enfants" !
posted by R. Mutt at 3:16 PM on August 9, 2010

Just send the falafel bill to, uh, Bill. He's in charge of petty cash.

And, whoo boy, is it ever petty.
posted by joe lisboa at 3:21 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

So, who is organizing the travel for Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" Rally held on the anniversary of MLK's speech on the steps of the Lincoln memorial?

From the FPP article:

"With rooms booked and mall permits applied for, Drawdy and some others affiliated with Beck's 9/12 Project started planning for a big march on September 11, the day before the FreedomWorks event. Initially, the permit Drawdy applied for was in the name of Yvonne Donnelly and the National 9/12 Project. Donnelly is Glenn Beck's ex-sister-in-law and administrator of his 9/12 Project website. But a few months later, Beck decided to hold his own rally on the Mall on August 28, so Donnelly asked Drawdy to take her name off the permit application. Rather than simply cancel the march and throw in with the Beck or FreedomWorks events, Drawdy told activists that Beck's emissaries simply wanted to hand it over to "the people." In early December, Drawdy assured activists that the march would proceed—and that there would be plenty of hotel rooms."

And ... Travel News & Deals for 8/28 In Washington, DC:

"If you have not made plans for the 8/28 event in DC, you better hurry! Hotel and Airfare details are below. (Special thanks to Christine D. of One Step Promotions and Incentives, you rock)."

So, it appears that Christine Dawdry is also booking for the 8/28 event on the National Mall.
posted by ericb at 3:24 PM on August 9, 2010

Thorzdad: Meanwhile, in Maine.

So an atmosphere of paranoia is bringing internal strife that would be comical if it wasn't endangering a group's whose own power wasn't somewhat scary.

If schadenfreude wasn't already a thing, I'm sure I'd be able to make up one even more accurate to this situation.

But it will do.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:25 PM on August 9, 2010

Blazecock Pileon: ""Follow the money." -Tea Throat"

uh i think you mean "steep throat" come on
posted by boo_radley at 3:26 PM on August 9, 2010 [28 favorites]

Teabaggers should just come out of the closet and admit that they are basically anarchists.

More like revolutionaries (in the truest sense of the word) in the vein of Hitler's Brownshirts and Mussolini's Blackshirts.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:35 PM on August 9, 2010

From Thorzdad's link:

Cucci wrote. "Amy Hale has been alienating people by prideful statements, pirating ideas, controlling statements and actions, manipulative actions, shunning advice and giving untruthful advice, which in some cases has resulted in no participation or refrained participation in the Tea Party Movement by those affected."

Cucci says Hale's rallies "are nothing more than a GOP promotional with little or no understanding gained for participants as to what the Tea Party Movement is about." The worst sin, according to Cucci? The tea party rally Hale hosted in Dover, Maine, "was boring, not motivational as claimed by several participants."

Prideful statements? Wait, is this the Tea Party we're talking about or the Amish?

And on top of that she hosted a boring Tea Party Rally. Bad, Amy. Bad. No Biscuit.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 3:45 PM on August 9, 2010

Which Tea Party are they talking about

My favorite kind of tea party was the kind had underwater whilst playing hooky during swimming lessons. Thinking about that kind makes me less grumpy.
posted by emilyd22222 at 3:47 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Tea Party related, in a Palin kind of way.
posted by wierdo at 3:49 PM on August 9, 2010

For Griffing, the stakes are high. Agents who reserve blocks of rooms at big hotels usually have to sign contracts promising to fill them or pay for the entire package, not just the unsold rooms. So while the commissions are fairly small—$10 a room or 10 percent of the cost—the liability can be huge. Griffing says she is on the hook for about $2 million. If she fills them all, she stands to earn about $62,000.

Hold on, this business model is BRILLIANT!
posted by monju_bosatsu at 3:49 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

The Tea Party phenom makes a good case for the Great Man theory of history. If there was a Hitler-caliber leader available to them, they wouldn't be imploding like this.

On the other hand, the moderates of Weimar Germany thought the Nazis were a joke.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 3:53 PM on August 9, 2010 [3 favorites]

I'm glad I read this. I will now use neither of these ladies to get me to the 9/12 rally.
posted by The Potate at 3:57 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

So the Tea Party got together just long enough to screw up the Republicans chances to take control of the Senate and now they are disintegrating. Republicans were so smart to embrace these guys.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 4:00 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Well... they've successfully scared the shit out of a few idiot Democrats as well.
posted by Artw at 4:02 PM on August 9, 2010

Griffing says she is on the hook for about $2 million. If she fills them all, she stands to earn about $62,000. If she doesn't, she could end up in bankruptcy.

Interesting. The implication is that *she's* on the hook, but if she has any clue at all, her personal finances are safe, and the corporation she's running to do this is on the hook for $2 million.

Then again, she's a member of the Tea Party. It's perfectly possible that she would back a $2M note to gain $62K. Not that it *ever* snows in DC in January. Never.
posted by eriko at 4:03 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

I'm glad I read this. I will now use neither of these ladies to get me to the 9/12 rally.

If you are being sincere, then as a good and consistent Tea Partier should you not avoid the socialist federal highways and federally regulated airline industry in getting there? Good luck with that.
posted by joe lisboa at 4:12 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

Drawdy went to the US Park Service and applied for a permit to hold rallies and marches on large swaths of the National Mall for the entire weekend of September 12, 2010

This comes back to the Ron Paul stickers at the public library from the other day, but shouldn't these rallies be held at corporate stadiums instead of public parks? I hope they only admire the lower portion of the Washington Monument paid for by donations, and not the hideous top two thirds paid for with taxpayer money.
posted by Gary at 4:13 PM on August 9, 2010 [5 favorites]

the rooms aren't filling up quite so fast, possibly due to march fatigue among the tea partiers

As if it wasn't hard enough to take the Tea Party seriously when they at least bothered to show up with their misspelled signs and stupid slogans. "March fatigue"? Does the Tea Party even do anything other than march? That's what you get for picking the lazy and ignorant demographic to be the core of your phony grassroots movement.
posted by Kirk Grim at 4:23 PM on August 9, 2010

but if she has any clue at all, her personal finances are safe, and the corporation she's running to do this is on the hook for $2 million.

You'd think so, but small business loans frequently require a personal guarantee signed by the business owner. Turns out, banks have heard of limited liability, too, and they are not so keen on letting folks off the hook when their business goes south.

Of course I have no idea precisely how this woman financed her business, whether there were any loans or personal guarantees involved, just that small business owners are frequently unable to benefit from the corporate form in these kinds of matters.
posted by rkent at 4:24 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

*steeples fingers* Excellent.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:41 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

If you are being sincere, then as a good and consistent Tea Partier should you not avoid the socialist federal highways and federally regulated airline industry in getting there? Good luck with that.

Joe Lisboa--I was being sincere only in the sense that what I said was completely truthy. The implication that I would attend the rally in the first place was intentionally (humorously?) misleading. I don't truck with them cats.

You might agree that the very pinnacle of irony is that TeaPartyPlanner.com offers tickets on Amtrak, which Michelle Bachman just tried to eliminate.
posted by The Potate at 4:48 PM on August 9, 2010 [8 favorites]

monju_bosatsu: "For Griffing, the stakes are high. Agents who reserve blocks of rooms at big hotels usually have to sign contracts promising to fill them or pay for the entire package, not just the unsold rooms. So while the commissions are fairly small—$10 a room or 10 percent of the cost—the liability can be huge. Griffing says she is on the hook for about $2 million. If she fills them all, she stands to earn about $62,000.

Hold on, this business model is BRILLIANT!"

No shit! I gotta get me a big hotel!
posted by graventy at 4:53 PM on August 9, 2010 [7 favorites]

It is pretty annoying that the tea party has received so much coverage despite being the political equivalent of a terrible-twos-style temper tantrum. I wish the Working Families Party would get some press once in a while, as they are a bona fide social movement and political party with positive, sane, progressive* goals that most people would probably support, like improving access to affordable health care and housing and to proper education, and greater investment in social services in general.

* Bearing in mind that one of their main goals, working to preserve America's middle class and resisting the efforts of the ultra-wealthy to push everyone else under the poverty line, is perhaps more accurately described as a conservative position.
posted by clockzero at 4:55 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Tea Party related, in a Palin kind of way.

I watched this earlier today, and it made me absolutely viscerally furious. How dare that woman roll her eyes at the words "I'm a teacher"? I try hard not to hate people, but that was fucking offensive. That plus a bunch of hateful anti- Muslim comments immediately following Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek column (in which he writes he'll return his award and 10,000 doallars to the ADL) completely ruined my day.

A pox on the pro-ignorant, xenophobic, environmentally a-conservative, socially regressive, fiscally cretinous right.
posted by oneirodynia at 5:03 PM on August 9, 2010 [4 favorites]

Remember: 67,000 people. That's all the Tea Party is. Which is good, because if they really were a huge groundswell movement the nation would already be well on its way to imploding.
posted by JHarris at 5:12 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, in Maine.

I wrote the article linked to by TPM. Here's a follow-up.

Things are getting pretty weird up here, Tea-Party wise. The strangest thing, however, has to be the efficiency with which this band of apparent incompetents has taken over the Republican Party. The Maine GOP was long known for their moderate New-England Republicanism, but in the space of a few months the Tea Party has staged a dramatic takeover, including the complete rewriting of the party constitution and the landslide election nominating their favorite candidate for governor.

There's energy there, and anger. It'll be interesting to see whether it burns out or blows up.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 5:51 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

So where do the New England moderates go? Just go along? Stay home?
posted by R. Mutt at 5:58 PM on August 9, 2010

Or perhaps, move to West Athens and live off the land?
posted by R. Mutt at 6:03 PM on August 9, 2010

They should settle it the old fashioned way, pistols at dawn. Or maybe a duel to the death with giant pick-axes in the middle of the desert.
posted by cazoo at 6:08 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

So where do the New England moderates go? Just go along? Stay home?

During the convention I think they did stay home. Those who care enough to become delegates are usually a bit more partisan anyway, but the Tea Party phenomenon amplified that trend and added some organization.

During the election, the moderates likely voted for one of the other six candidates.
posted by Vectorcon Systems at 6:20 PM on August 9, 2010

So have we stopped paying for this, then?

*head asplode*
posted by louche mustachio at 6:24 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Weren't all those teabaggers supposed to Go Galt last year, anyway?

C'mon guys, where's your follow-through?
posted by darkstar at 6:52 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

quin: Also: ...when Rhode Island travel agent Joanne Griffing lost her job in the recession. At risk of losing her house, she grew desperate. She signed up to take in foster children

Maybe I'm being really unfair here, I but this feels more than a little sleazy. Her finances are in ruin and she puts more lives at risk to cover herself? I don't know, bringing kids already in need of help into an environment on the brink of failure as a solution just seems like recipe for disaster.

Welcome to the foster-care system. Each foster child comes with a stipend to cover the child's care but no one ever checks on where that money actually goes. As long as you don't totally lose your shit and beat the child to death and end up on the front page of the NYPost—you've got a sinecure.

Ms. Griffing is certainly not the first to make this calculation; I know of several similar situations in my neighborhood because some of those kids come to our community garden to play. And some don't, because they can't even reach out that far.

RE-RAILING: Let the invisible hand do its work! A free market is a fair market! You're pissed off because someone is maybe doing something unfair to outsell you? In the immortal words of Tom "Mustache of Understanding" Friedman: SUCK. ON. THIS.
posted by dogrose at 7:33 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

I've done some hotel contracts for an organization's annual conference and the penalty for not booking all rooms is indeed severe. But this figure seems way out of whack, unless she signed up for thousands of rooms. And taking it on in her name instead of an organization is absolutely insane.

And ditto on taking in foster kids, both on the matter of taking government money while decrying socialism, and on thinking that taking them in is a solution to one's one financial problems. Someone's going to suffer in this process. If she was in this much financial trouble, the state shouldn't have allowed her to take kids in.
posted by etaoin at 7:49 PM on August 9, 2010

They should settle it the old fashioned way, pistols at dawn. Or maybe a duel to the death with giant pick-axes in the middle of the desert.

See...that would be a great fundraiser! I'd pay money to watch that. Any more feuding teabaggers want to get in on that action, I bet we could fill their coffers in no time at all.

Double bonus: by the time they're in the black, there would be a significant reduction in their number.
posted by contessa at 7:53 PM on August 9, 2010

I bet we could fill their coffers in no time at all.

coffers/coffins for teh lulz
posted by darkstar at 8:15 PM on August 9, 2010

/HAMBURGER, in case anyone thinks I'm advocating teh violence
posted by darkstar at 8:16 PM on August 9, 2010

On the other hand, the moderates of Weimar Germany thought the Nazis were a joke.

Jimmy Havok, do you know who also thought the Nazis were a joke?
posted by sebastienbailard at 9:04 PM on August 9, 2010

it's funny how often the extremist right blows up their movements with greedhead deathbattles.

There's a scene in Black Legion (Humphrey Bogart joins the Klan) that absolutely nails the con-game aspect of it. It would play perfectly in any wingnut endeavor from the Klan II in the 1920s (though they also had a little jail-bait statutory rape to help them on their way out) to the militia madness of the last epidemic of right-wing cranio-rectal inversion. I look forward to more of this.

The reason being that these folks are moral absolutists - hypocrisy is meaningless to them and sincerity is for the chumps. It's only the morally relativistic libruls who care about walking the talk and being pure-hearted. It's a jungle out there, their Nature's God is red in tooth and claw. If the big ones eat the little ones, that's the way God wanted it.
posted by warbaby at 9:11 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

Beck decided to hold his own rally on the Mall on August 28,

Well, now I know which weekend to pick to leave DC to visit my cousins in New England.

These people who think they're the foot soldiers in a growing army are as deluded as the Sneetches and are going to end up just as broke, only instead of learning a valuable lesson about tolerance they're just going to be angrier at minorities and gays and anything not white and evangelical.

So true. The comparison to your friends who worked on Democratic campaigns is apt. Looking back several years ago, a lot of Dems in late 2002 because really disillusioned with the party, mostly over the fact that they rolled over for Bush with the Iraq war. The reaction of a lot of Dems was to sign up for the Howard Dean campaign or end up joining one of those independent-campaign organizations like America Coming Together. What it didn't involve was spending lots of money on upscale hotel rooms. Instead it was a lot of pavement-pounding and voter-organizing, creating a bunch of seasoned campaign volunteers who were experienced and went out to work for other local campaigns across the country. The problem here lies with Glen Beck and Dick Armey, both of whom are exploiting the movements to funnel money and attention to themselves: it's not about organizing conferences and making travel arrangements; it's about getting bodies into voting booths. How many of these guys, at the end of the rally at 8/28, are going to be able to serve as a precinct captain or understand how to fill out a canvassing form, or have any idea how to talk to voters? Though I'm sure if they want to learn and get some experience, Glen Beck would be happy to tell you about it at an upcoming convention: just book your flight and hotel room before Sept. 1st!
posted by deanc at 9:40 PM on August 9, 2010 [2 favorites]

If the big ones eat the little ones, that's the way God wanted it.

Only as long as someone can mislead them into thinking they are, or are just about to be, or one day will be a "big one." When it happens to them, OMG let the whining begin. The tea party implodes the day people realize that the GOP elite doesn't give a fuck about them, they're just being used.

Sure would be awesome for a wikilieaks-style expose of the people behind this garbage. The sheer cynical condescending contempt they have for the sheep who are doing their bidding seems obvious to me, but I have family members who for some reason will not believe it. Sad.
posted by ctmf at 10:52 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

tl;dr but rofl
posted by Cranberry at 11:15 PM on August 9, 2010 [1 favorite]

So let me get this straight: an out of work travel agent prays to God and lands a fat contract to move a bunch of politically illiterate semi-religious nutbags from Peoria to Washington, leading to a catfight between her and someone equally odious for a share of the next year's spoils?

God does indeed move in mysterious ways.*

And for the record he pointed out that he only uses Joanne Griffing Travel Inc. Any suggestions to the contrary will be dealt with by her lawyers.
posted by MuffinMan at 12:35 AM on August 10, 2010

The sheer cynical condescending contempt they have for the sheep who are doing their bidding seems obvious to me, but I have family members who for some reason will not believe it. Sad.

The contempt rightwing demagogues feel for their audiences is entirely justified.
posted by Jimmy Havok at 2:04 AM on August 10, 2010 [1 favorite]

OK, here, from Return of the King, is the Lord of the Rings quote I was thinking about and mentioned above. I do think it is apropos. Setting: Sam and Frodo are in Mordor, hidden behind a bush. As they listen and watch from concealment, two orcs argue, and one unexpectedly kills the other.

For a while the hobbits sat in silence. At length Sam stirred. "Well, I call that neat as neat," he said. "If this nice friendliness would spread about in Mordor, half our trouble would be over."
posted by bearwife at 10:57 AM on August 10, 2010 [4 favorites]