A Final Word on Tea Parties

Much ink has been already spilled about the faux-populist protests known as Tea Parties. I think it's fine for disgruntled conservatives to peacefully protest. Now they'll reach the same conclusions we on the left learned a long time ago: protests accomplish not all that much in the long run. Lawmakers ignore them altogether and their impact on a large scale is quite minimal. If Republicans want to use them as a way to network with each other and have solidarity in a kind of misguided, ill-thought-out ideology, that's probably the most realistic outcome they ought to expect from all the bluster.

The irony among many of these protests is that the first Tea Party was conducted by a bunch of rabble-rousing liberals who objected to a very conservative, very remote King dictating distasteful orders and increasing the American tax burden on staple products from across the ocean without any colonial say in the matter. The most immediate impact of throwing tea chests in the ocean was that Great Britain, in a retaliatory measure, closed Boston Harbor to trade and to increase the tax burden as punishment. These measures did, of course, effectively inflame the Patriot cause, which snowballed into armed rebellion a few months later. The major grievance colonists had with Mother Britain is that they were being used as a cash cow and source of cheap raw materials while not being fairly compensated for their goods. In 2009, then, using the phrase "tea party" then, is not a particularly accurate comparison to the current day. While the fear of and response to increased taxation is what both of these gatherings have in common, that's about as far as it goes.

The conservative argument assumes that nearly all taxes are evil by their very nature. Tax revenues, as their line of logic goes, fund unnecessary programs, are allocated improperly, or are embezzled by lawmakers and lobbyists. While it is true that there is wasteful spending and improper stewardship in government and always will be, the conservative argument assumes that the private sector is somehow immune from this same kind of gross incompetence, greed, graft, and corruption. If anything, the private sector is just as seriously flawed as the government if not more so, and certain companies resort to such shady accounting practices, blatant cronyism, and unfair labor practices that the government looks lily-white by comparison. I think a much fairer conclusion would be to say that neither government, nor the free market has some kind of intrinsic purity.

To reiterate, there are many fallacies in the conservative argument against taxation and so-called big government. The first is that somehow the Federal Government and Washington D.C. is the supreme offender. Many state governments are far more wasteful and ten times less effective. This is what gets conveniently left out of the discussion. The second is that government growth is a cancerous evil that must be checked lest it spread and destroy the country. I see no one on the right willing to acknowledge that if they believe that, they need also believe that the unchecked growth of huge corporations is a similar threat upon the rights of individuals, businesspeople, and consumers.

Heh heh, "final word". Yeah right. If only.

I'm really glad conservatives thought tea-bagging was the way to go here.

By gum - if you flip through any random conservative message board out there, you might be fooled into thinking that these fruitbats really are freedom-fighters, massing to take on the fascists in Washington, judging by the crazy levels of support and hype they've been receiving.
It's funny - all the news I've seen regarding this coming out of the States, shows rather glum-looking people standing in the rain, drinking kool-aid (not tea), and holding placards about the previously mentioned fascists in the Whitehouse.

They don't look much like the new wave of revolutionary change in America to me.

Bless 'em.

AP reports that Gingrich spoke in front of two thousand people in New York City.

In another thread a user reported the Philadelphia turnout was less than 500.

Tempest in a teapot, anyone?

The Philly turnout was actually even less, more like 200.

Considering that Fox News heavily promoted all of these things in advance dozens of times rather than reporting them after the fact, the low turnout is pretty pathetic.

...and by the way, so much for "fair and balanced", eh? It's long past time for them to drop the ruse and just call themselves the Conservative Hype Network, or something, with a slogan like "We create the news, then we hype"

I can't even find any news on any local turn outs, can you Toku?

I stopped by the Houston event on my way home last night, mostly to heckle, and experienced some serious cognitive dissonance on account of I don't particularly like Obama's economic team, nor his surveillance, prisoner treatment, or war policies, either, but I do support positive rights.

Still, it was fun to take the piss out of pro-war anti-tax crusaders. They held up signs that said "Audit the Fed" and I yelled "Audit the Pentagon." Maybe I'll write a blog post about some other highlights. It was a gorgeous evening and there were probably more than 1,000 people there. Nothing like the millions on February 15th, but whatever.

Cincinnati drew about 4,000. Chicago got a surprising 5000.

Oh, you guys missed the teabaggers on Second Life.

There's a tally of many of the events here. About 110,000 people total.

I think my highlight was heckling the teenagers with their anti-tax signs.

"What?" I said, "Is the government taxing your allowances too much?"

That doesn't surprise me. Cinci has some suburbs that are very right-wing religious suburbs.

Five-Thirty-Eight is reporting it as 2000 people though.

Guess the counting isn't really the strong point of the teabaggers.

Those are really soft numbers, though. They are culled from hopefully non partisan sources, but a lot of them are likely secondary. Most people have no idea what 500 or 1000 people look like, and estimating by square footage doesn't work very well for small groups.

Hmmm. I know there have been a few discrepancies like this. Who do you believe, Nate Silver or the AP? Also, I know you were joking, but both sources are trying to avoid numbers from protesters and organizers.

I know most of us here think the tea parties are a big joke, but if a couple hundred thousand people come out for these protests, astro turf or not, it's something worth noting. It's nothing akin to the worldwide Iraq war protests, but it's still a lot of dissatisfied folks.

What strikes me as odd, is that most people taking part in these "tea parties" are getting tax breaks right now, not tax hikes.

You and your fancy "logic" can take a hike, mister. A tax-hike, that is.

I wouldn't exactly say that.

If you look at the Civil Rights, Gay Rights or Womens Rights movements (amongst many others) you can certainly see that there is progress through protesting.

Admittedly, those are still on going battles that the respective parties have to fight. But, things are better now than they were before, and protesting was the major component for those changes.

The key is timing, numbers and how you act.

According to 538's reported data, an approximation of protesting teabagger to U.S. citizen is 1 out of 3000, I'm not convinced that is very much (by comparison, we can't expect much more then, say a 1/3 turnout among voters for a general election, which is what really matters here).

Of course 538 goes on to say that there were undoubtedly many more people protesting since these tea-gagging parties occurred in many a burgh and ville throughout rural America, some with disproportionately higher turn out compared to larger populated areas (so let's just say about a half a million people participated in some form or another). Still, considering the Fox media campaign hyped the entire event for weeks, I'd agree with what others have been saying as well, it's an astroturf fizzle.

Ah, I just checked and it looks like 538 has made an update:
Tea Parties Appear To Draw At Least 250,000

A number of much smaller gatherings still remain unaccounted for and not surprisingly, about 1000 people showed up from my town (pop. over 100,000). I should have gone to counter-protest!

... and what you're fighting for (i.e., having concrete goals that as a group you are all moving towards...)

I did leave that out, didn't I?

Also, looking at the history of those protests, it helps a lot if you have a clear aim. The tea parties wound up being a sort of catch-all for all sorts of populist rage - bailouts, spending, taxes, the road to socialism, whatever. It means that more people show up, but it dilutes whatever aims they might have had and makes it completely impossible to react to them. Which I think has fueled a lot more derision of these protests than there would have been otherwise. If they had come in with clear, specific goals they hoped to accomplish, they'd be a lot harder to ignore and could potentially have opened a dialogue.

In a larger sense, this has been true of a lot of the protests of recent years, which leads to a perception that they're just useless.

I agree with you there.

There are certainly many examples of failed protests in our history.

Whatever. I've met some of my best friends at protests (or organizing protests). Ahh, the romance of kissing behind the barricades.

But seriously, public shaming has always had a place in the ongoing fight against tyranny, and you can't discount the catharsis offered by saying "not in my name."

A fun side note: the only "tea party" themed protest in Boston was by a gay rights group that were pissed about married gays being unable to file their federal income tax jointly.