Tea Parties: Somewhere Between Hysteria and Utter Foolishness

America’s right wing is trying to breathe life into a kind of national anti-Obama movement with organized marches. But not all Republicans are being taken in by the “tea parties”, and the Obama administration appears unimpressed.

A few hundred demonstrators stand in the rain; they sing patriotic songs and posture for the cameras. It’s supposed to look like a “movement.” For prime time, they’re going to orchestrate some agitation.

The people hold signs up. “There’s no hope in socialism” can be read on some. Others read, “Taxed to death and beyond” and “Congress enslaves our children with debt.”

None of those assembled here seems to be bothered by the fact that their “movement” can’t seem to decide between warning against public debt and calling for reduced taxes. The mission here isn’t relevance, it’s anti-government protest – or more accurately, a protest against the current administration they think has seized their property. The marches are called “tea parties.” Not only in Lafayette Square, just a teabag’s throw from the White House, but all across America, the conservative hardliners are gathering to vent their collective spleens.

The Boston Tea Party was a preliminary event leading to the American Revolution. The New World settlers objected to the taxation plans of their colonial masters. In protest against the British Empire, they dumped an East Indian Trading Company shipment of tea into Boston Harbor.

These days, tea stands for “tax enough already.” The greedy oppressors don’t reside in London but in Washington. The Democrats are the Redcoats, and President Obama is King George.

Conservative strategists worked for weeks toward this day, spurred on by the producers of Fox News, the right-wing television channel that damns Obama as either a malicious socialist (when dealing with tax matters) or a political wuss (when dealing with rogue states).

Nothing could be left to chance, nobody should escape hearing the anguished cries of the upstanding, so Fox News dispatched its horde of reporters to snuffle out every tea party, regardless how small and insignificant. A U.S. map covered with red dots showed the locations of every protest from sea to shining sea, and Fox News moderators were near at hand, on the spot, whether in San Antonio, New York or Sacramento.

Protest TV is nothing new in the U.S. The Rupert Murdoch channels have been practicing it for years, but this time they were joined by liberal MSNBC, which mobilized nearly as many forces as Fox (but only to make Fox look silly, of course). The other networks mainly ignored the whole tea party tempest.

Officially, the organizers claimed to be politically independent. Eric Odom of the website TaxDayTeaParty.com told the Internet site Politico that he had “never seen such a politically independent event.” Besides Republicans and Libertarians, quite a few Hillary Clinton Democrats attended the parties, but not many people shared Odom’s assessment.

The leaders of the “movement” were clearly right-wingers: Republican mouthpiece, Newt Gingrich, for example, and John Boehner, House Minority Leader. The conservative Freedom Works Foundation was a major contributor to organizing the events. Even last year’s puffed-up election miracle weapon, Joe the Plumber, made the scene.

But the would-be grassroots protest wasn’t attractive enough for some Republicans. Popular initiatives are often hard to control. The party elites worry about their influence, so Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin were nowhere to be seen at any of the parties. Both are still considered possible Obama opponents in 2012, and they know: Demonstrators would rather listen to conservative radio moderators who preach the pure line than they would to politicians who now and then might have to compromise with Democrats.

The opposition is beset by inner-party strife as shown by the public shoot-out between Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh. The former is the moderate head of the Republican National Committee, and the latter is probably the nation’s best-known hot air source. Steele dared to characterize Limbaugh as an “entertainer.” Limbaugh was beside himself with fury and got so excited during his talk show that Steele finally backed down saying, “I didn’t intend to minimize his importance and leadership in any way.”

The Democrats reacted to the tea parties with marked disinterest. Robert Gibbs, Obama’s Press Secretary, said only, “The president promised significant tax relief for working families in this country. And in the first month of his administration, delivered just that to the American people.”

The powers that be in Washington don’t seem interested in paying much attention to the protest. And why should they? An opposition that alternates between hysteria and outright foolishness while engaged in trench warfare against itself is always welcome.