The New Tea Party Magazine (And the Comic Strip Creator Who Edits it)

Tea Partiers found out today that one of their own (Rep. Allen West) will deliver the keynote address at the annual CPAC gathering this weekend. It turns out, they'll also be getting their own magazine there.

The Tea Party Review magazine will debut at the weekend's conference, and it's being billed as "a place to develop plans for taking our country back from the elitist, arrogant, obnoxious, corrupt members of the Washington establishment and their friends in Hollywood, the news media, faculty lounges, and on Wall Street."

The magazine's website gives a glimpse of what subscribers will find inside:

• Complete coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign.
• How are leading candidates reaching out to Tea Partiers?
• Who deserves Tea Party support?
• The ultimate rundown on political corruption in America.  If you didn’t see it all in one place, you’d never believe it!
• Washington’s War on the American Family.
• Cartoons from the creators of “The Gentleman from Lickskillet”… and other satire aimed at Big Government and Obama’s “Ruling Class.”

“This magazine is a response to demands from tea party members across the country for a magazine that we can call our own,” Katrina Pierson, a member of the Dallas Tea Party and the magazine’s national grass-roots director, told Roll Call. “People are weary of the distorted version of the tea party movement that we see in most of the media. Tea party members want a magazine for the movement, created by members of the movement and reflecting the values of the movement.”

The magazine's editor is Steven Allen, who the website says has "37 years’ experience as a journalist, as a radio news director, newspaper reporter and columnist, and magazine editor."

But his most interesting resume element might be his most creative: he's the brain behind the conservative political comic strip, "The Gentleman from Lickskillet." The satirical strip, which debuted in 2009, is now defunct. But during its run, it featured fictitious Congressman Randall Dill and his experiences in Washington, D.C.:

Pierson told Roll Call the first issue of the magazine will feature a comic “about a tea party Congressman dealing with the Red Chinese,” although it's unclear if the strip will be a resurrection of "The Gentleman from Lickskillet."

Allen holds both law and Ph.D. degrees, and served as press secretary to former Sen. Jeremiah Denton (R-AL).

The reaction thus far has been mixed. Mediate says since the magazine does not endorse one particular Tea Party group, "it’ll be interesting to see if the disparate Tea Partiers can unite behind one media force," while the Washington Post questioned a magazine spokesperson's decision to invoke the name of other great movements (such as the abolitionist one) in describing the need for a publication.

The magazine's website (which will be retooled on Thursday) says the magazine will publish monthly, and will cost $7.50/month or $34.95/year.