The "tea party" movement: Page 6

... what does anyone expect from the tea parties? Partly because JTP doesn't really know what he's talking about, that made it easier for Andrea Nill of ThinkProgress to write the misleading blog post "Joe The Plumber Says Immigrants Should Get 'The Hell Out Of Our Damn Country'" [1]. Here are some of the ways she's misleading her readers: 1. The title is misleading, if not an outright lie. It's...

... plan (after attending one of the tea parties). As (Instapundit) and I have noted, chanting and waving signs are great, but if you really want to influence the way government works, you have to put yourself in front of the folks who make the decisions. And those at the lowest levels - city and town councils, mayors, county boards, members of Congress - are rarely used to crowds of people...

The attached video shows a group from the "Conservative Society for Action" protesting at a town hall meeting held by Long Island Rep. Tim Bishop. It's difficult to describe just how idiotic it is. Rather than going inside and trying to engage him in debate about his policies, they stand outside waving loopy signs, conducting a sing-a-long, and chanting various slogans. Not only that, but they...

Remember how all the tea parties forced a sea change in Washington DC as formerly corrupt political hacks - weighed down by the tons of tea bags they'd received - changed their ways? Yeah, me neither. In fact, Obama will probably be into his second term before many of those involved realize just how dumb their leaders are. * One slight glimmer of non-stupidity comes to us from Buffalo, where the...

... electoral impact whatsoever. The "tea parties" give every leader what they want: a small, ineffective, fringe opposition. This is akin to, say, Bill OReilly baiting CodePink and then sending out a camera crew to take pictures of their loopy signs at their protest against him. The "tea party" leaders aren't smart enough to figure any of that out and to create a broad-based movement. Instead, they...

... Spot" weighed in on where the tea parties should go next and offered the following idiotic, ACORN-style plan (link, bolding added): If 100-1,000 people show up at a rally, the event may or may not get media coverage, and that coverage may or may not be snarky or dismissive. Congressmen may or may not notice, and the President's spokesman will announce he's not aware of them... But if 100-1,000...

... plumbing these depths is what the tea parties leaders want. 2. The reception might cause him to change his policies and I don't know enough about SC politics to say what the impact would be; he might end up losing after alienating more moderate voters. 3. Even if he changes his policies and all the other politicians in SC are forced to abide by the wishes of those at the party, they'll have "won...

... 300,000 turned out for all the tea parties (link). And, he does that by linking almost 400 events in cities across the nation to local reports with their estimates of the turnout. On the other hand, pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/76884 links to pajamasmedia.com/blog/pjtvs-crowd-estimates-for-tea-parties-still-climbing: The estimated number of participants in yesterday’s tea parties - sent in by...

... futile, stupid, and pernicious the tea parties are: link. Both of them feature CNN reporter Susan Roesgen; watch the second first which features her puffball coverage of far-lefties holding a friendly, running protest near Obama's house in Chicago. The first video on the Hot Air page was shot after a live report by Roesgen (the live report is linked and described here). It features a...

... definitely not the one that the tea parties are projecting to the world. Rather, their objection is to taxes in general, and in many or most cases not out of ideology but simply out of extreme self-centeredness. Many leftie useful idiots actually want what's best for the U.S., even if what they support would actually be counter-productive. Many or most of those at the "parties" have absolutely...

... York Times might have done the tea parties a great big favor by giving them a great big pinata to whack at: the fact that Krugman tries to do a hit piece on them (link). Shortly after engaging in ad hominems and losing his train of thought for a few paragraphs, he says this: ...it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake...

... you'd expect, and it pushes the tea parties even further down the road to Idiocracy. Previous sign posts on that road have included mailing tea bags to politicians. The current sign post Basso is aiming for is for people to honk their horns three times at noon on April 15. No, I'm not kidding. For all his bombastic dire warnings about things that (presumably) Obama is going to do, Basso is...

... the latest on the "grassroots" tea parties: PJTV: I talk with PubliusPundit - and Tucson Tea Party organizer - Robert Mayer, and with Tea Party facilitators Matt Kibbe of Freedomworks and Chris Bond of Americans for Prosperity about tea parties and where they should go next. Click their name's link for more on the AFP; at least as of November of last year the chairman of their foundation's board...

... 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...

... outlines is indeed where the tea parties and other completely ineffective populist movements are leading, and it looks to me like Erickson is promoting mob action. What Erickson isn't promoting is a much more effective plan that would help reform politics and that would be completely legal and non-violent: asking politicians tough questions on video. Coming up with ideas like that and promoting...

The picture from today's massive protest is attached. On a more serious note, Glenn Reynolds keeps pushing the protests, despite having little to work with. At post time, there are just two events on his page: a small one in Stamford, and a slightly larger one in Buffalo that drew a few hundred people. The picture from Matt Margolis - formerly of Blogs for Bush - here is worth a look. The sign...

Way back in December 2002, I went to the first of several "peace" protests in order to take pictures of the wacky signs and such. I ended up getting a few "Instalanches" (links from Instapundit) out of it, and Andrew Sullivan even linked to one of them. Plus ca change, as Sully is now an Obama supporter and so on. And, Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit is now linking to (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/...

... to do. It's just a stunt. The "tea parties" are just a stunt. Asking politicians stupid questions about hypocrisy is just a stunt. There are enough stupid stunts on all the reality shows on TV and all the political food fight shows on cable TV. What we need is for politicians to be asked tough questions about their policies to their face on video. That's 100% defensible and if people get in...

... this wasn't one of the classic tea parties in the Ayn Rand/"taxation is theft"/"greed is good" sense. Instead, it was based on something that John and Ken had been pushing before the "tea parties" started and it was mostly a protest of local California issues relating to Arnold Schwarzenegger. They glommed on to the "tea party" idea and did feature some discussion about the stimulus plan, and...