Tea Party Praised but Its Leaders Mostly Absent at Key Conservative Conference

By Cristina Corbin
Published July 23, 2010
FoxNews.com

Rep. Michele Bachmann, center, speaks at a press conference for the Tea Party Caucus July 21 in Washington, D.C. (AP Photo)

Organizers of the RightOnline conference of conservative bloggers and activists touted the influence of the Tea Party on Friday, saying the grassroots movement has been pivotal in galvanizing citizen activists across the country through new media and social networking websites.

But of the roughly 100 speakers and panelists present at the annual forum of like-minded activists, few, if any, represented national Tea Party organizations, raising questions about how well the movement will work with long-established conservative groups leading up to the November midterm elections.

The Right Online conference, now in its third year and sponsored by the conservative group Americans for Prosperity, is aimed at teaching grassroots activists how to become more effective through new media and popular social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook.

Arguably, no conservative group or movement yet has made better use of such networking sites than the Tea Partiers, who fueled the movement with Twitter and relied heavily on Facebook and other sites to organize rallies – locally and nationally.

“The Tea Parties are largely a new-media phenomenon,â€