Sometimes A Revolution Requires You Shell Out a Few Bucks

"No one likes a daggum cry baby," high school football coach and founder of Primerica Financial Service Art Williams said. When it comes to winning, whether it's football, business or politics, Williams' words ring true. Sometimes negativity can act like a contagious disease. And like a contagious disease, you want to catch it early, isolate it and cure it. This weekends Tea Party Convention in Nashville, TN is proving to be both an educational experience as well as a cleansing one. Sometimes, taking back a nation requires you shell out a few bucks and find out who's not a serious player by those who whine about it.

Realizing that this is an internal argument within the movement, this blogger wants it to be clear that all of us have a right to our opinion. But the belly aching, the whining, the pulling of support for people and the outright verbal hissing is beyond me. I thought I joined a movement of grown ups. The daycare center is supposed to be for liberals.

Watching people go into tantrums over the cost of attending this weekend's Tea Party convention tells me one thing. We can now find out where the balls and chains of our movement are. They are among us.

Apparently there are those who believe that we should hold a Tea Party convention in a field and conduct training and workshops in people's backyards. Liberals abuse us because we are a loosely fit group that has no infrastructure, no leader and is run amock with extremists. They're right, for all the wrong reasons.

The time has come for the Tea Party movement to grow up. Sometimes you need to rent a hotel, pay a few bucks, train your people properly and begin building an infrastructure. Those who have issues with Tea Party Nation being a for profit organization, go quit your jobs, work in the movement full time for free and waste time navigating complicated FEC laws and show me if that works better. If it does. I'm in.

If you can find hotels, trainers, speakers and attract media coverage without spending any money, again let me know. I'm in.

There are those who whine that it's no longer a grass roots movement because we will have trained people instead of a bunch of untrained yahoos running around saying crap that the left wing media is going to use against us, or that we rent hotel rooms and have meetings instead of sitting in our pajamas blogging to each other about how pissed off we are. If we're serious about electing candidates, then we need to know how to organize a telephone campaign, not to mention know what to say on the phone once we do. If this is selling out, or if this is not grass roots, then I probably need to leave the room. I can't expose my weak brain to that kind of nonsense lest I get caught up in it myself.

Now we know who the serious players are and who the whiners are. Those who have legitimate differences with things within the movement or the choices of candidates being backed, I'm not talking to you. It's good that everyone has input, discusses it and understands where everyone stands. But, because we are a diverse movement there will come times when some of us don't do what others want. We are trying to fight against an intolerant government. We shouldn't be becoming intolerant of ourselves.

The whiners and the cry babies can go home. There are things that I have some issues with, but I choose not to bring them up right now. They are minor. They are not worthy of a discussion that will only cause more whining. And expressing them will not help me take back the country. Reagan showed us how to build coalitions. There were times when he included those who some in the movement had issues with. The reality of the matter is if you want the purity of your message to win, you need votes.

There's a difference between selling out and shooting yourself in your foot. Pragmatism sometimes requires a touch of unorthodoxy. If we want to govern, we better be prepared to know how to earn or raise money for the cause, build coalitions and stop majoring in the minors. Meeting in fields and carrying home made signs may work at the beginning of a movement, but knowing what the hell you're doing technically and procedurally is just as important as knowing what you're doing ideologically.

This is a time for growing pains in the movement. That's exactly what this is, "growing" pains. If we keep crying like children, we will never get the movement to adulthood.