Two weeks ago, they were “porkulus” protests (I think they didn’t take off because the name was so sexy nobody wanted to protest it). A year and a half ago, they were anti-anti-war protests. There were sanctuary protests in San Francisco and anti-communist protests in Orange County, black pro-lifer protests at the DNC and Planned Parenthood protests in Denver. Jeremiah Wright got protested, as did Sean Penn; even protesters got protested, as did the New York Times.
The right wing has been protesting everything in the fucking world for the better part of the decade, and the same conservative bloggers and activists who’ve been showing up in 200-person groups in every major city in the country since Bush took office once again showed up in 200-person protests “across the country” in organized “Tea Party” protests. And again, conservative bloggers declared it the second coming of democracy, proudly bleating about the power and force of protests that usually had more passers-by than actual protesters.
So why are these protests being referred to by Mark Tapscott as a fundamental shift in the political power dynamic, when it’s just another in a long line of ultimately pointless expressions of conservative frustration with the world, neither building on popular sentiment nor expressing a particularly popular or accessible belief?
Part of it is the fact that the Tea Parties are bought and paid for by the Koch family, and was a movement in search of a moment. But any number of conservative faux-populist movements have had significant funding and apparent popular support and have gone absolutely nowhere. So what’s driving these Tea Parties as some sort of important and momentous event in American politics?