Local Tea Party organizer Matthew Ridenhour gets it exactly right — but critics of any negative response to Bailout Nation will continue to portray today’s events as an astroturf product of Fox News or some other imagined bogeyman.
The truth is that this is a largely spontaneous and, yes, unfocused spasm directed toward eight months of creeping nationalization of the economy. Are various right-of-center groups trying to grow mailing lists and sell t-shirts as they draft along behind? Absolutely. But the key is they are drafting along behind.
As with all significant, potentially lasting movements the Tea Parties are cultural — but not in traditional black-white, right-left, urban-rural terms. What we are seeing is nothing less than the revolt of the responsible. It should go without saying — and it has — that the federal bid to forgive and subsidize home mortgages is deeply and personally offense to millions of Americans who did things The Right Way. Hipsters can laugh and scoff, nihilistically deny any Right Way, even point out inconsistencies — where were the Tea Baggers as King George Bush quartered federal snoopers in phone lines as he mocked any notion of the civil liberties all true patriots cherish? — but in doing so they miss the big picture.
Many, many previously apolitical Americans of some talent and good will are alarmed by the recent policy choices made in this country. At a minimum that response and today’s action should be met with an honest “why is that” rather than snorts and chortles.
Update: More than 2,000 eh? That is pretty impressive.
