The great Republican tax protest, the nationwide tea bag party, came and went yesterday. According to fivethirtyeight.com over three hundred people turned out in Nebraska alone. But bold plans to dump a million tea bags in the Potomac, for mob rule across the land, and for Texas to secede from the union, all came to naught. The day, in other words, was a fizzle despite the trouble and expense gone to by Fox News and other rightist organizations. Here's how to avert similar let-downs in future:
Improve the timing. A tax protest is a fine idea almost any time. Who ever likes paying taxes? But the Obama administration just implemented the largest tax cut in history. All but a relative handful of Americans will see their tax bills lowered. Trying to whip up a rabid anti-tax mob in the year of a major tax reduction was possibly not so smart.
Get new promoters. Those demented Barbie and Kens on Fox News lack credibility. However frenziedly the painted inflatables touted the tea bag parties, they couldn’t escape their own patent falsity. Even Fox viewers object to being so obviously manipulated, especially if it means shifting their fleshy haunches off the couch and out into the street. And short though the average rightist's memory might be, the spectacle of Texas' governor denouncing intrusive big government was just too much. Rick Perry after all was an ardent supporter of George Bush's epic expansion of federal spending. Also his historic invasion of domestic privacy and violations of civil rights. And his unrelenting curtailment of the freedoms of speech, assembly, and movement. They might as well have had a talking hemorrhoid for a spokesman.
Spice up the events themselves. For weeks now right-wing leaders have been urging followers to engage in "tea bagging." Doubtless they counted on the titillating effect of the racy double-entendre to swell, as it were, the crowds on April 15th. But in this the rightist leadership shafted itself. Few of their supporters knew what "tea-bagging" really is. Had it been presented explicitly as a form of oral sex, turnout on the day might have been much higher.
Of course many righties would have had to have oral sex defined for them, to say nothing of sex straight up. Along with the upsurge in teen pregnancies, it's just another unintended consequence of the GOP's abstinence only program.