[T]hese “Tea Parties” are nothing more than GOP leftover rallies from a population still deeply absorbed in its own denialism over the loss of the Presidency to a Democrat.You do sometimes hear that, contra Kain, conservatives really are upset at Bush's spending. To the extent that the right is upset over Bush's spending--to the extent that some, like Newt Gingrich, have exiled him from the movement--I suspect that a principled case against Bush's wasteful spending would be unappealing to conservatives. If one leaves aside the wasteful spending of pentagon procurement and unnecessary wars--which I suspect conservatives would love to do--there's not too much left to pick at. There's Medicare Part D, there were oodles of corporate welfare to energy companies (among others) that were the sum total of the Cheney Energy Plan, there were giveaways to agribusiness in the 2004 Farm Bill, and various sorts of tax exemptions and pork projects liberally spread around. Virtually every one of these instances of wasteful spending aren't the result of Bush and the GOP going liberal--Part D, perhaps, but even that qualifies in the inescapable trend here: Part D was largely as a giveaway to corporate America. I suppose one could be angry at the principle of giving prescription drugs to seniors, but it certainly could have been done in a way that wasn't a bonanza for pharma. Instead, it was a bonanza for pharma. The Bush years' excessive spending sprees were characterized by a combination of corporate welfare, and a lobbying culture that was successful in Republicans to go along with the program. To the extent that Bushian wasteful spending existed, it wasn't really a function of anti-conservatism so much as an excessively powerful nexus between business elites and political elites, which still exists and is very dangerous, but it rose to new heights with the GOP unified government days of 2003-2007. It strikes me that a series of protests by right-wingers against political collusion with industry would be just the sort of salutary and attention-grabbing stunt that might change a few assumptions among the opinion elite, which is exactly why the conservative movement co-opted them into general-purpose conservative two minutes' hate-a-thons. The possibility of a visible anti-corporate right would make their job so much harder.
In fact, it makes sense that the conservative movement would deliberately want to muddy the meaning of these Tea Parties as being nothing more than the sum of conservative resentments. (By the way: read Dave Weigel's piece here). Annexing the Tea Parties means that the conservative movement has control over the outward message to some extent, and making it FOX News-sponsored only means that they'll have final cut over what gets out there, tailoring the coverage as they see fit and presumably drowning out any other comers. Keep in mind that it is crucially important for these people to continue the illusion that they represent the only "real" conservatism--if suddenly it starts to seem as though actual conservatives look a lot less like Mitt Romney and a lot more like Daniel Larison, it will prompt more than a bit of reexamination in the public sphere, and it's possible that GOP politicians would have to move to adapt to the change. Considering that, say, pivoting on free trade would likely offend big business this is not something they want to do.
Now that I think about it, these protests aren't likely to really help the GOP and can hurt it in a number of ways--by turning violent, by being repellent, by putting forward messages like fair trade that evidently are prevalent among conservatives but not among the GOP elite, for starters. How can they help? Did any of the left's anti-Iraq protests do anything other than make for an amusing sideshow during the run-up to Iraq? These things tend to be either mocked or ignored, when they don't turn violent. I suppose it is possible that peaceful protests that were narrowly targeted against, say, the bailouts might be effective. Not so much the stimulus bill, which is broadly popular, or the budget, which is too large and sophisticated to be reduced to something to be inserted into, "What do we want? ______! When do we want it? Now!" Anyway, that's enough for now.
