Here's what Glenn Reynolds says (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/78071):

MORE LOCAL ACTIVISM: Tucson Tea Party sends 1000 activists to City Council Meeting.

I don't need to tell you that the truth is a bit different:

1. The page he links (tucsonteaparty.org/?p=6) says that more than 1000 turned out, yet the two MSM reports linked only say more than 700. The third doesn't give a number. And, the linked page includes this: The Tucson Tea Party, Arizona Multi-Housing Association, as well as the Tucson Realtors' Association encouraged their members to attend. How many real estate agents were there? I'm going to guess a large number. Not only that, but according to one MSM article, Many speakers were bused in by groups opposing the tax and left when their buses departed.

2. The angry renters [1] decided to be like Code Pink with the difference being that since pink was taken they encouraged their members to wear red. The tea party page says 2/3 wore that color; one MSM report says it was only a third, another just says "many" were so attired.

3. Another MSM article says, "The proposed tax increases have met a substantial amount of resistance in both the city government and the community."

4. Clearly, the tea partiers are glomming on to an unpopular proposal and taking advantage of its unpopularity among more powerful groups (like Realtors) to inflate their impact. Glenn Reynolds is misleading his readers into thinking that all "1000" were tea partiers, when they clearly were not.

5. The tea partiers clearly have no understanding of leverage. They're going to a meeting and asking the City Council - all Dems - to do what they want. The council will probably do what they wanted to do all along, even if they have to change their tactics a bit. The tea partiers only power over the Council is their votes and perhaps the possibility of a recall (the Realtors probably have much more power). Yet, someone with a great deal of power - such as a major contributor to the councilmembers or someone who otherwise can have an impact on their political careers - could more or less tell the council what to do. The partiers can form a PAC to get such power, but they don't have the numbers or the ideological foundation. However, they can also get such power over politicians by asking them discrediting questions on video. That will give them some degree of power over those politicians' political careers, and that's going to have an impact on what policies those politicians push. I'm going to guess that most of those speaking at the event simply whined rather than asking tough questions specifically designed to make the councilmembers look bad. The other groups might be smart enough to pursue such a plan, but clearly the tea partiers are not.

6. The tax increase is apparently to fund non-profits; some of those non-profits might support illegal immigration or have other issues that those smarter than the tea partiers could take advantage of by asking councilmembers why they're funding such groups.

7. In addition to Insty, Jim Geraghty of National Review has given this event his idiot's stamp of approval (link).

[1] Reference to this unrelated Freedomworks astroturf campaign: angryrenter.com