Checking in on that other-other grassroots movement

Its apparent by now that the Left is kinda freaked-out by the tea party movement so the talking points have gone out and criticisms to discredit the movement is a two-pronged assault.

First, its being portrayed as an exclusively anti-Obama movement, as if being opposed to the person or presidency of Barack Obama was the primary motive of the movement. This was predictable as well as off-base. Yes, the President will receive some direct fire but the overarching theme of this movement is incredulity over a culture of borrowing and spending beyond our means to extract ourselves from a mess caused by… borrowing and spending beyond our means. (There were Arnie and Barney Frank piñatas but no Obama piñatas at the protest on Saturday. This was the savvy, prudent and honorable thing to do. As angered as we are by the President’s policies, the office of the President affords him a level of respect not fetched by a state governor or certainly a congressman). A culture that is realized and exercised through the massive overreach of the government…. a government minded by a corrupt lot on Capitol Hill to a degree we have not seen in ages.

You are asking us for more of our money to keep people that have no business owning a home in that home at more favorable rates than what we have now. Please feel free to perform anatomically impossible reproductive acts upon yourself at any time. That is what is driving this movement.

The second theme of dismissal is that because Fox News is actually reporting on this movement and/or this movement is being funded by conservative groups, it somehow de-legitimizes the movement. Imagine that – a news organization actually reporting on the news. As far as funding and coverage goes, no one has offered us any money to attend these events. No one offered us a free bus ride to “visit” the homes of our well-heeled politicians. The tea party we went to on Saturday as well as the one yesterday looked to be a pretty threadbare event to us… we did not see the trappings of any well-oiled political connections. The vast majority of the signs were all home-made and the speakers were all ordinary Joes and Joannes – students, small business owners and soccer moms and this is how it should remain. Conservative groups could spend millions and millions of dollars and never dream of generating the turnouts we've seen the past few weeks.

Besides, regardless of who is funding and how much they are funding it by does not account for our passion with respect to this matter – passion that has been on display on these very pages with respect to Bailout Nation since this past fall. Passion to get people off their asses to attend protests for the first time in their lives simply cannot be manufactured or funded.

And now a few words on semantics. The tea parties are being dismissed because the original colonial tea partiers were protesting taxation without representation. Libs and other Obama-philes argue that this is not the case today – we do have elected representation thus the affiliation with the original partiers is null and void. If by “representation” one means being elected into an almost immediately tenured program via districting and campaign finance laws to accept money from lobbyists and write laws that favor the highest bidder and to generally serve in one's own political and financial interest then, yes, we do indeed have “representation”.

And what about the representation of future generations? What about those who are not even born yet that will live with the consequences of the decisions made today. True, the moment the Republic was born, decisions were made by elected officials that would have ramifications for years to come? However, never have we paid it forward so much debt and irresponsibility in the form of current and future proposed spending and looming legacy burdens in Social Security and Medicare than we are at this very moment. Who is representing them? Who is representing their best interests by a sober assessment of the situation and prudent action rather than throwing (their) money at the problem?

Can we get in one more..? Conservatives are being branded as hypocritical for not being this forcefully against Bailout Nation when Bush was in office. We’re not even sure how to respond to this. It’s, simply put: willful ignorance. Outside a few people at the Wall St. Journal or the Weekly Standard, we cannot come up with even a handful of likeminded folk whom we communicate with or read from who have been fans of Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism, which is merely statism by degrees, let alone his gratuitous 2nd term spending and his John-the-Baptist heralding of Bailout Nation. To contend differently is inviting intellectual dishonesty.

Any manner of “taking to the streets” was a matter of momentum and tipping points and not a function of who is/isn’t in office.

Exit question: The coordinated nature, speed and ferocity of these dubious attacks to discredit the tea party movement begs the question: What are they afraid of?