ACORN doesn't need to sabotage the tea parties, they're doing a bang-up job on their own

The latest news from deep inside Galt's Gulch - home to the last 300 organizers of the tea parties - is that ACORN is trying to sabotage the "parties" [1]. There's certainly the possibility that they might be doing that, but they don't need to for at least a couple reasons:

1. The partiers are already doing a great job marginalizing and discrediting themselves on their own, and
2. The "parties" are a great way to keep Obama's opponents occupied doing something completely ineffective.

For some examples of the first:
1. The claim that ACORN is doing something is made without even a shred of supporting evidence [2]. There are no pictures, no video, not even a first-person account. Not even hearsay. Anyone who's even slightly skeptical will probably think these people are suffering from a persecution complex.
2. The recent claim that the city of Cape Coral shut down a "party" was completely bogus. The organizer simply didn't want to abide by reasonable rules that the city had posted on their website involving events with more than 500 people.
3. I haven't been to an event or looked at all the pictures available, but I'm absolutely positive there are many more wacky signs than the one shown in this post, the "John Galt" sign at pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/74067, and those here: pereiraville.com/scribble/?p=7104. Signs like those are not a good sign vis-a-vis getting participation from those who are more mainstream.
4. Some of the groups promoting the events do in fact have links to the Koch family, no matter how much some might try to say that the only major hit piece on the "movement" has been debunked. At least the Atlanta event is linked to Grover Norquist. And, a major supporter of the "movement" as a whole has been Dick Armey. All of those support massive immigration; they are not in any way friends to those of us who oppose massive/illegal immigration. And, it would be incredibly easy for the MSM to begin an anti-tea party campaign that would hit home. The MSM has not done that already no doubt for the two reasons why ACORN probably needn't waste their time infiltrating the protests. But, they could if the "parties" ever took off. It wouldn't be that difficult for the MSM to succeed in portraying those behind the scenes - not the useful idiot local organizers, but those actually pulling the strings - as extremists.

P.S. In case anyone thinks I'm an ACORN supporter, see their name's link up above. I first started discussing them here in July 2004.

UPDATE: Scratch everything I said above! The New York Times has done a hit piece on the "parties", meaning they must be worried. Oh, wait, it's just a minor smear piece from Lawrence Downes: link. If they were truly worried they would have written a "news" article similar to those that they did on Sarah Palin.

UPDATE 2: Uh oh, now here's a real worry. Lee Fang of the Obama-linked Center for American Progress blog ThinkProgress offers "Republican Members Of Congress Embrace Radical Anti-Obama Tea Party Protests" (thinkprogress.org/2009/04/08/gopestablishment-joins-teaparties). It's typical childish tripe, but the fact that it's appeared there may in fact indicate that the Obama administration is at least a little bit worried about the parties.

[1] pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/75770
[2] teapartymay16.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=2956151%3ATopic%3A1261

Mon, 04/06/2009 - 21:59 · · Importance: 4