If it weren’t for the serious potential for a terrorist attack, I’d find all the stuff that Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh says hilarious. Listening to the clips of them on Daily Kos and Crooks and Liars is hysterical. Seeing Glenn Beck’s "War Room" where a bunch of civilian’s give a worst case scenario of things that will NEVER happen is pure, gut-busting entertainment for me. It’s proof that the liberals have won, because the only conservatives left are the one’s that have completely lost their minds.
So I decided to attend a tea party just to see in person, as Stephen Colbert would say, a group of people who have turned up the crazy and broken off the knob.
I would’ve loved to have been one of those guys who goes around with a video camera and asked people questions that give them the deer-in-headlights look like "did you know Obama just lowered your taxes?" But I didn’t have a camera. And I’m still unsure of what the laws are concerning putting video of people on the internet.
I didn’t meet a bunch of nutbars, at least not when you take away the politics. I was pretty surprised that the people act and look the same as what I’ve seen at liberal protests. Incredibly friendly, keeping within the law so they don’t make their movement look bad, and as distrustful of the government as we can be. It was more a learning experience for me about the mind of the Fox noise watching right-winger than anything else.
The turnout was surprisingly good. There were over 100 people at the rally in Farmington Hills. Many of the right-wingers said that they thought they’d be the only person to show up.
And as far as the crazy goes, there wasn’t anything new. Nothing we haven’t heard before or mocked. They were protesting an increase in taxes (I guess nobody got the memo that Obama just lowered their taxes), the bailout on the banks, and universal healthcare.
What surprised me was how when they don’t realize that you’re a bleeding heart liberal Democrat, how much they have in common with you if you frame the issues the right way. While you won’t get them to back universal healthcare, they like the idea of regulating the banks. Just don’t call it regulation. Call it punishing the bankers or making the banks follow the rules so the working man doesn’t get screwed and suddenly they love the idea of regulation.
But getting agreement on issues and getting them to vote on them are entirely different matters. These guys will still vote for whomever Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh tell them to (Republicans). No matter how many times Ron Paul tells them the Repugs and the Dems are the same (and believe me, these guys love Ron Paul), they’ll still vote for the Repug because they’re believed to be the lesser of the two evils.
That, and they believe they’re being persecuted by liberals. Because the radio and TV tell them they are.
But what I learned the most is that the right is using the playbook we used against Bush. The purpose of the tea parties wasn’t to get any issue accomplished, or even to stop any of Obama’s policies from coming to fruition. The intention was to create a right-wing base of activists to create a counter-movement to what we’ve built up during the Bush administration. They’re making right-wing versions of us. That’s why they’re doing stupid stuff like honking your horn at noon if you can’t be in a protest. While honking the horn doesn’t accomplish any political goals, what it does is make the right-winger think he is while following the orders of Beck. It’s like enlisting in the Beck army.
Whether or not this will work, I don’t know. If they keep on the path of stupid conspiracy theories, they’ll be about as relevant as the so-called "9/11 truth" movement. But if they can get their shit together and come up with their own brand of right-wing populism to counter ours, then they could be a force to be dealt with.
Never underestimate the right.