In his weekly column "Willie's World", former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown wrote today about the Tea Party movement and controversy over Sarah Palin's planned commencement speech at California State University at Stainslaus.
On the Tea Party:
The Tea Party movement may look like a badly needed energizer for California's Republican Party, but I think in the end it will do the GOP more damage than good.
Basically, the Tea Partiers are the same collection of conservatives who have always been on the right fringe of the party - only now, they have a hero in Sarah Palin and a target in Barack Obama.
Palin:
"Palingate," the flap over the missing contract for Palin's speaking fee at the CSU Stanislaus Foundation's fundraiser, would never have been a story at all if the foundation had handled it correctly.
From the start, the foundation should have candidly said what it was paying her. If it was $100,000, then say it. There is no such thing as "confidentiality" when it comes to public institutions, even if the group in question is a foundation that takes no public money.
Read more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/18/BAEP1CVHCJ.DTL