Open thread: Palin’s tea party speech

9 p.m. ET. Print media’s overflowing with tea-party stories today and cable news is promising saturation coverage, so this has very quickly become the second-biggest speech of her career. If she does as well tonight as she did at the GOP convention, the next round of poll numbers for her and the movement will be mighty interesting.

Two pieces to tide you over while you wait. The first is Politico describing the media-bashing going on at a convention that’s crawling with reporters:

Organizers initially moved to limit access to outlets deemed friendly to the cause, including Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal, Breitbart.com, Townhall.com and World Net Daily. But they later relented and now say they’ve issued 200 press credentials, including multiple passes each to many of the elite national media organizations regularly disparaged by conservative activists as Democratic shills — the hated liberal mainstream media, or MSM…

“The mainstream media is the enemy,” declared Bob Bunting, a retiree from Hilton Head Island, S.C., attending the convention with his wife, Nancy Bunting. “You are for socialism and Barack Obama.”…

The convention credential list — which reflects granted press-pass requests, not actual attendees – also included five journalists and crew members from NBC News and four from ABC. Time magazine was allotted passes for a total of four journalists (likely including at least one photographer), while The Washington Post and The New York Times had a couple journalists each included on the list, and The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and Newsweek each had a reporter on the scene (as, of course, did POLITICO).

Jim Hoft has video of Breitbart zinging the press during his speech this morning. Meanwhile, WaPo wonders how much the members of an unorganized organization really have in common:

Here was a California woman counseling people on how to register new Republican voters in their communities, but there were others who criticize the Republican Party as fiercely as they do the Democratic Party. Here attendees lashed out against the practices of the Washington establishment, but there a man from Memphis announced the formation of a political action committee. Here a former congressman delivered a fiery defense of America’s “Judeo-Christian values,” but there delegates walked out of a prayer session they thought crossed a line…

Lori Christenson, who started the Evergreen-Conifer Tea Party in Colorado in her house using the social networking site Meetup.com, wants politicians to act like their power comes from the people, not from their celebrity. Her group refuses to get involved with conservative social issues, which she calls “very, very divisive.”

“I am coming to realize at this convention,” she said Friday, over the thundering of a speaker from Judicial Watch, “that we are very, very different in terms of our beliefs. So now what?”

Follow the link and scroll down for a pithy summary of what the movement’s about from, er, David Axelrod.

The two things to watch for tonight: How partisan will Sarahcuda be at what’s being billed as a nonpartisan event, and how heavily will third parties weigh in her rhetoric? She’s been admirably firm on that latter subject so far but the temptation to toss this crowd red meat by calling for political independence must be incredible. Exit question: Michael Steele could have gone to this thing but had to back out due to “scheduling issues”? What’s he got going on tonight that’s more important than this?

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