Tea Party Unity Convention Canceled on the QT

Remember Tea Party Nation's National Tea Party Unity Convention? The one that was originally scheduled for mid-July in Las Vegas? Three weeks prior to Convention's kick-off, organizers announced that they'd postponed it as they wished to avoid the intense heat of a Vegas summer and because "it would more advantageous to hold the convention in the middle of October just prior to the November elections [sic]." At the end of July, organizers announced a new date, October 14-16. So, how's the planning for this Convention coming along?

It seems to have been pretty good up until 9/11. That's when TPN's Judson Phillips last posted messages on Twitter about the convention--notifying folks that Sherrif Joe Arpaio would speak at the event, and that "For every 5 full convention registrations purchased, the 6th is free! Must be FULL registrations Details here: http://dld.bz/taXY #teaparty." Since last week, though, the convention appears to have been canceled quietly.

Raven at Raven Brooks looked into the progress towards the National Unity Convention and concludes that it's been canceled. First, the link Tea Party Nation provided for convention information is dead. (see: http://www.nationalteapartyconvention.com and you get "page not found"; however, cached versions of pages, taken four days ago, still exist). Secondly, the convention's location--the Mirage Hotel and Casino--no longer has a room block for the convention. Raven writes,

I wanted to make sure the convention really was canceled and they [TPN] weren’t just having web issues or neglected to do any PR for their event. So I put in a call to the Mirage hotel and asked if I could book a room in their block for the event. Turns out the room block had been canceled and the Mirage had no record of the event.

No press releases issued, no blog posts, no notes on the Tea Party Nation site, just--poof. It's rather a surprise, considering the Tea Party's momentum in the past few months or so, but there it is.