The "patriots" in the tea parties aren't exactly going all out to oppose the anti-American DREAM Act amnesty. The loudest voices against the Obama administration have mostly gone silent against an amnesty which could cover between one to two million illegal aliens and which would allow those illegal aliens covered by it to take college resources away from their fellow citizens.

That doesn't mean that all of the teapartiers are silent: Michelle Malkin has been trying to rally her readers, and no doubt many aligned with the teaparties are calling their representatives.

However, on Twitter at post time there were fifty tweets mentioning "teaparty" in the last nine minutes. There were fifty tweets that mentioned both "teaparty" and "dreamact" in the last *24 hours*. Not only that, but *13 of those were from me*, and one other was a response to me.

And, there's nothing that I can see on Glenn Reynolds' front page about the bill. Likewise with fellow teapartiers and staunch Obama opponents Dan Riehl, Gateway Pundit, and Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com [1]. Townhall has a poll on their front page, which isn't exactly the same as encouraging people to call their representatives. Hot Air has had some coverage, but there's nothing on their front page at post time.

Back in May I predicted that the teaparties and rightwing bloggers might stumble us into amnesty. I guess I'm partly right: they might be stumbling us into it simply by ignoring it.

The fact that the DREAM Act would let illegal aliens deprive some citizens of college probably doesn't mean much to most teaparty "patriots". However, considering that the DREAM Act would increase spending and give even more power to the Democrats and the far-left, you'd think that opposing it would be right up their "fiscal conservative" alley. Further, that bill - and immigration in general - is the issue where the Democratic leadership and the far-left are most vulnerable. Even if they think the bill has little chance of passing, it would be very smart and helpful of them to use the bill to make the Obama administration look bad.

Yet - just as they largely ignored immigration for over a year and ignored or supported George W Bush for eight years - the teaparty "patriots" are mostly AWOL.

And, I think we know why.

ADDED: I got rid of a phantom sentence fragment. And, here's another Twitter metric, using the "SGP" (SmartGirlPolitics) tag. There are currently around 150 to 200 tweets per hour using that tag. With the word "dream" there are just 50 tweets in the past 23 hrs. and several of those are from me. With the word "dreamact", there are just 50 tweets in the past *four days*.

12/08/10 UPDATE: With the DREAM Act vote today, Reynolds, Riehl, GatewayPundit, and BigGovernment have no coverage at all. HotAir does have a post on their front page. Patterico and Protein Wisdom have nothing but ace mu nu does have a post that links to HotAir.

12/18/10 UPDATE: The DREAM Act was voted down today. Here's an update:
* Before the vote, RedState had no frontpage posts urging people to take action against the bill. After the vote, Moe Lane offers "5 (or 6) Democrats kill DREAM Act in Senate" (redstate.com/moe_lane/2010/12/18/
5-democrats-kill-dream-act-in-senate), as if the bill failing was a bad thing.

* Before the vote, Glenn Reynolds had one, brief post (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/111621) linking to Mickey Kaus but not suggesting any action people could take. Reynolds' post is from 2:15pm Eastern on Friday, not exactly enough time to make a lot of phone calls.

* The Tea Party Patriots do in fact have a page about the bill (teapartypatriots.org/dreamact.aspx), but it doesn't appear to have been a big issue for them and their Twitter feeds don't have any alerts about the vote (@tppatriots, @jenuinejen).

* Human Events did have one call to action which was apparently on their front page about a day before the vote: humanevents.com/article.php?id=40663

* As before, there were no front page posts at Big Government and no alerts @AndrewBreitbart

* Before the vote, at the ironically-named American Thinker the only post about the bill on /blog was from December 4. Afterwards, there's the brief americanthinker.com/blog/2010/12/dream_act_nightmare_fades_for.html

* In the few days before the vote, Gateway Pundit had no posts about the bill except for one today (gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2010/12/
republican-filibuster-may-kill-dream-act-amnesty-bill-vote-this-am/). It was posted less than two hours before the vote and no doubt many of his readers only will have seen it after the vote had taken place.

* The day before the vote, Don Surber had one blurb (among 21 other blurbs) opposing the bill but not urging action: blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/26693 After the vote, he has a post just about the bill: blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/26749

* NewsBusters had no posts about the bill in the days before the vote, but at least they somewhat have an excuse in that they're more a watchdog than advocacy group unlike the others listed in this post.

* The Daily Caller had some news-only reports about the bill before the vote, but no calls to action. And, in two of those reports Chris Moody made misleading claims about the bill (see my comment: dailycaller.com/2010/12/09/
senate-again-puts-off-dream-act-vote that post was followed by a similar one).

* In the seven days before the vote, neither Patterico nor his guest contributors had any posts about the bill. Afterwards, he has patterico.com/2010/12/18/
two-big-lame-duck-votes-dream-act-blocked-
dont-ask-dont-tell-soon-to-be-history

* In about the last week, Dan Riehl had no posts about either the bill or the vote.

* Twitter favorite Cubachi had no posts about the bill in the past week, and only had one tweet expressing concern about it (twitter dot com/Cubachi/statuses/15572893865873408).

* Protein Wisdom had a post on the 16th urging people to call about a tax bill (proteinwisdom.com/?p=23583), but the latest post generally about the DREAM Act is from the 13th (proteinwisdom.com/?p=23496) and just deals with this.

One (admittedly backhanded) excuse for those listed and others who largely ignored the bill is that they might not be amnesty advocates so much as something else. Namely: they just aren't smart enough to be able to figure out how to oppose amnesty correctly. Please ask them which it is.

12/27/10 UPDATE: The only post at Breitbart's BigHollywood or BigGovernment about the DREAM Act occurred *after* the vote and was from comic Greg Gutfeld:
bighollywood.breitbart.com/ggutfeld/2010/12/20/
nightmare-of-dream-act-doesnt-come-true

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[1] A BigGovernment.com search brings up two posts, both of which just mention the DREAM Act in passing. The latest is from going on two weeks ago:

11/24/10: biggovernment.com/sahiller/2010/11/24/lefts-pressure-on-pelosi-triggers-potential-clashes-with-obama/

10/22/10: biggovernment.com/jhoft/2010/10/22/az-group-accused-of-massive-voter-fraud-is-offshoot-of-seiu/