Well, we just had 600,000 people in the streets protesting big government, inflation, and the promise of higher taxes. You could not get 600,000 people to do that after four months of Jimmy Carter. You could not get them to do that after four months of Bill Clinton.
You could get people to protest about illegal immigration or the Iraq War in much greater numbers, but that's beside the point.
The right has decided to use the tea parties as proof that there is grassroots opposition to every element of Barack Obama's agenda. There isn't, of course. Obama is still broadly popular, as are his policies. I suspect, though, that movement conservatives subsidized those events largely so that they'd have a comeback to, "What do you have to say about polling that says that President Obama's policies are popular?" Protests are supposed to move the debate forward by influencing public opinion and giving unknown causes sympathetic faces. It seems that all the tea parties did was to give Republican officials another talking point. In other words, it's just more spin to avoid accountability. And since there was no discernable agenda to these rallies--some people didn't like current tax rates, others didn't want higher future tax rates, some people didn't like brown people, others just didn't like Obama in particular--makes them these amorphous blobs that can be deployed for any rhetorical opportunity.
"So, Pat, what do you say to polls that show that President Obama's social security plan is popular?" "Well, Chris, there were over 600,000 people who took to the streets..."
"So, Newt, why do you think reorganizing the census bureau is a winning political issue?" "Well, Dan, there were lots of census signs at the tea parties..."
"Well, Billy Bob, why don't people like The Boxmasters?" "Joe Bob, we wanted to perform at those tea parties. It would have been an enormous crowd. Too bad." "What does that have to do with anything?" "I don't know what you mean."*
But it all gets better with this: "The left is always busy explaining that taxes don’t matter. It’s like the bad guy in the action movie telling the good guy, 'Put down the gun and we’ll talk.'" I'm not familiar with that kind of scene in "the action movie", so I'm assuming he means the scene where the bad guy is holding the little girl hostage and tells the good guy to put his gun down or the girl gets it in the face. The good guy puts the gone down, holds his hands up, and his partner shoots the bad guy in the back. This is all boilerplate nonsense, though evidently we learned that Grover Norquist has never actually seen an action movie--social butterfly that he is--and that he's likely only heard plot snippets here and there. But it does end with this gem: "When class enemies warn you off something, it’s for their benefit, not yours.”
Seriously, guy? Wait, I thought that only the Democrats engaged in class warfare? At least we now have an open declaration of the class conflict from a conservative--this class Cold War shit was getting old.
*Yes, that was an imaginary conversation between Billy Bob Thornton and Joe Bob Briggs. You know you wish that existed in real life.
