Emerson Introduces Herself to Tea Party Crowd

Rep. Jo Ann Emerson attended her very first tea party on Saturday to scrounge up votes from the super conservative wing of her party.  It's hard to tell how things went -- there weren't any real fireworks in the press and first-person accounts of the event, but both Emerson and tea party activists are working to keep their distance from each other.  The tea partiers obviously don't like a lot of her votes, and she (to her credit) wasn't all that enamored with their birther jokes and "socialist coup" rhetoric. 

From Rudi Keller's story on the rally in yesterday's Southeast Missourian:

While Emerson said she doesn't agree with everything said on stage -- she singled out [Poplar Bluff radio personality C.R.] Woolard's joke about Obama's citizenship as one example -- she said she doesn't turn away from chances to hear from any constituents. "It was my first Tea Party, and I felt I should go and listen," she said.

Eddie Justice, an insurance agent and one of the main organizers, said that was a big part of Saturday's plan -- get the politicians on stage with activists and, while giving them time, force them to listen.

"The way we are working this is we want to create a dialogue," he said. "We want our politicians to come listen to us. In order to make that happen, we have to let them say their piece and then you allow them to hear what we have to say."

[Bob] Parker, who asked to speak but was turned down, said he's worried the Tea Party movement may be co-opted by professional politicians looking for another constituency to take for granted.

"We do not want this movement to be taken over by these bailout voting politicians," Parker said last week. "Anybody who voted for the Wall Street bailout needs to be voted out of office."

Still left unanswered are questions about why Roy Blunt was on the Patriot Rally's list of featured speakers, then removed without any explanation.  To my knowledge, neither the event organizers or the Blunt campaign have explained the change in plans.

State Sen. Chuck Purgason tried to be added to the list of speakers, but like Bob Parker, was not permitted to address the crowd.

Thanks a bunch to Fired Up! contributors for these photos from the event: