So sad. Another “national Tea Party convention” cancelled due to lack of interest… and funding, since it was billed as a true grassroots-organized event not supported by one of the AstroTurf groups that pay for the buses and the wall-to-wall FOX News coverage.

Organizers of the Freedom Jamboree announced Wednesday that they have canceled the tea party convention planned for this fall, citing low registration.

They had hoped the event would serve as a stage for Republican presidential candidates to court the conservative movement, and two — Rep. Michele Bachmann Minn. and former Sen. Rick Santorum Pa. — had already confirmed they would attend.

The weekend of reflection and strategizing was scheduled for Sept. 28 to Oct. 2 in Kansas City, Kan., and included a straw poll. Twenty-one local tea party groups started it with the intent to reclaim the movement from national umbrella groups and offer an alternative to the annual fall tea party rally on the National Mall.“We were doing it because we were fed up with the infighting that these umbrella groups have done in 2010,” William Temple, a lead organizer who lives in Georgia, told Roll Call.

The national “groups,” having dropped their tools when they were no longer useful, may get around to using them again, but some of the finders are a little busy distancing themselves from the taint of the impending FOX/News Corp/News International meltdown. A big part of the funding and coverage of Tea Party events (not to mention laying on wrapped buses to haul them around) comes through FOX.

But the people heading up FOX and News Corp are a little busy, what with all the resignations. The legal department is in a little disarray because the top News Corp legal counsel resigned… back in June before the worst of the scandals even broke.

Now Hugh Grant is saying he regrets “Nine Months” because it was distributed by 20th Century Fox, and Jude Law is suing another Murdoch rag, the Sun, for hacking his phone. Now waiting to see if celebrities will start refusing roles in Fox pictures, but not holding my breath. Also kind of wondering how The Simpsons might refer to the scandal in future episodes, as that show has always been rather deft about witty subversion from within.

Who has time for a bunch of rubes who can’t afford to fly themselves and their extended families to Tea Party events? Who wants to spend money paying for a fleet of charter buses to collect them from Podunkburg? They’ll vote the way they’re supposed to when the time comes. The powers that run the Right-Wing Noise Machine are too busy with damage control to bother with the little, low-to-no information people who so reliably make up their base.
via Low Registration Sinks Tea Party Convention : Roll Call.