THE DAILY BLADE: Americans Tea’d Off Over National Debt
Although the media largely ignored the coast-to-coast Income Tax Day Tea Parties, lefties ridiculed them (“Go to a hobby store. Buy a scale model of a U.N. One-World-Government Black Helicopter and a tube of glue. Toss the model kit. Sniff the entire tube of glue. You're all set for the party.”) and Dems denigrated them as “Astroturf” (i.e., a fake grassroots movement), they weren’t just a red state phenomenon – Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. and other bluer-than-blue cities held well-attended rallies.
None other than CNBC’s Rick Santelli - whose rant against President Barack Obama’s housing bailout proposal was the inspiration behind the Tea Party rallies – termed them the real deal: “[I]sn’t it about as American as it gets - for people to roll their strollers and make their signs and go voice their opinion about the direction of the country?”
Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, writes in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “the concerns driving people to tea parties are real, growing and powerful. Politicians ignore them at their peril”:
The fear of future federal tax hikes is fueling the tea-party movement.
This is an important development. In 2008, voters were less worried about taxes than they had been in previous elections. Why? Because the 15 years between President Bill Clinton's 1993 tax hike and Barack Obama's increase in cigarette taxes in February was the longest stretch in
So far, Mr. Obama has decided to let the Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 and avoid forcing Democrats to take a tough vote. But the tea parties reveal how hard it will be for the president to hide the Democrats' tax-and-spend tendencies from voters.
But in another Wall Street Journal op-ed, Instapundit’s Glenn Harlan Reynolds notes, “[t]here's good news and bad news in this phenomenon for establishment politicians”:
The good news for Republicans is that, while the Republican Party flounders in its response to the Obama presidency and its programs, millions of Americans are getting organized on their own. The bad news is that those Americans, despite their opposition to President Obama's policies, aren't especially friendly to the GOP. When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele asked to speak at the Chicago tea party, his request was politely refused by the organizers: "With regards to stage time, we respectfully must inform Chairman Steele that RNC officials are welcome to participate in the rally itself, but we prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in Government as well as political parties. This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around."
Though another Tea Party is reportedly in the works for Independence Day, Reynolds asks the question on everyone’s minds: “Will these flash crowds be a flash in the pan?”:
It's possible that people who demonstrate today will find that experience cathartic enough - or exhausting enough - that that will be it. But it's more likely that the tea-party movement will have an impact on the 2010 and 2012 elections, and perhaps beyond.
What's most striking about the tea-party movement is that most of the organizers haven't ever organized, or even participated, in a protest rally before. General disgust has drawn a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena, and they are already planning for political action after today.
We won’t know for another three months, but in the meantime here’s a collection of the best signs and slogans The Stiletto came across reading and viewing what media coverage there was:
† Barney Frank, Bernie Madoff: And the Difference Is?
† Big Brother, You’re Way Too Heavy
† Commander In Thief
† D.C.: District of Communism
† Don't Talk to Me! I Forgot My Teleprompter
† Give Me
† Hey Big Brother: Show us Your Real Birth Certificate
† I Am 15 And I Already Owe $36,535
† I Am Not Your ATM
† I Fought For My Country, Work And Pay Taxes So Liberals Don’t Have To
† Let The Failures Fail
† One Big Awful Mistake
† Pin The Tail On The Jacka$$ (accompanied by a picture of Obama on a Democrat donkey)
† Spread My Work Ethic, Not My Wealth
† Who Will Bail
Editorial Notes: One Post updated to reflect latest nonpartisan attendance estimates.
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