Bad News For Democrats?
After quickly perusing Glenn Reynolds’ WSJ op-ed, several things jumped out at me. Here’s the thing that jumped out most:
There are no national rules, and organizers of each protest are doing things the way they want. And that’s the good news and the bad news for Democrats. It’s not a big Republican effort. It’s a big popular effort. But a mass movement of ordinary people who don’t feel that their voices are being heard doesn’t bode well for the party that positioned itself as the organ of hope and change.
It can’t be good news for Democrats that the Tax Day tea parties are spontaneous, grassroots-oriented events. It can’t be heartwarming that the Sandusky, OH tea party is an anti-spending binge protest:
There’s a tea party coming to Sandusky this week but you can leave your kettle and your tea bags at home. The event, slated for 5:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Washington Park Gazebo, is meant as a political protest against “big government” and excessive government spending. Young people in their 20s in the Sandusky area took the lead in organizing the Washington Park protest.
They sent e-mails out to their friends, urging people who support the protest to forward the messages to other friends. They also used Facebook and word-of-mouth advertising, said Bridget Harrington, 26, a BGSU Firelands student who plans to become a kindergarten teacher. “It’s been quite easy because people are quite interested in it,” Harrington said.
The fact that young people organized the event through Facebook and word-of-mouth is disturbing enough for Democratic strategists. The likelihood that many of these young people voted for then-Cadidate Obama should make this news doubly troubling for Democratic strategists.
This tidbit from Mr. Reynolds’ op-ed is getting attention, too:
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.
Cincinnati organizer Mike Wilson, a novice organizer who drew 5,000 people to a rally on March 15, is now planning to create a political action committee and a permanent political organization to press for lower taxes and reduced spending. Tucson tea party organizer Robert Mayer told me that his organization will focus on city council elections in the fall as its next priority. And there’s lots of Internet chatter about ways of taking things further after today’s protests.
A few years ago, Glenn Reynolds, Rob Neppell, Ed Morrissey and other prominent bloggers tried putting the spotlight on the Bush administration’s runaway spending with an organization called Porkbusters. The outrage they expressed was genuine but it did’t light a fire with enough people.
Little did they know that the Bush administration’s spending would look modest compared with the next administration’s out-of-control spending spree. Little did these fiscal conservatives know that a Democratic administration would overreach as badly as this administration has overspent on one bailout after another.
The Obama administration’s proposed spending trillions of dollars on bailouts lit the fuse that the triumvirate of Reynolds, Neppell and Morrissey tried lighting.
The Tea Party movement is likely at least partially responsible for the DHS’s putting out their right wing extremist memo. That’s the memo that said this:
The department said it “has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but rightwing extremists may be gaining new recruits” who could someday resort to attacks.
“The economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers fo rightwing radicalization and recruitment,” according to the report.
Ms. Napolitano apparently thinks that there are lots of right wing crazies:
BLITZER: Is it a bigger threat from your perspective and other [ed. - another?] al Qaeda and foreign related terror attack against the United States or domestic terrorism along the lines of an Oklahoma City bombing?
NAPOLITANO: That’s difficult to say because both are risks that are with us and will be with us and so what the American people need to know is that the Department of Homeland Security, as the secretary of Homeland Security, we’re thinking all the time about these issues. We’re working all these times on what we can do realistically to prevent, to interfere but also to prepare should something happen.
Apparently, DHS is lead by a paranoid person who isn’t in touch with the people.
As much as anything, that’s what’s driving this movement. People didn’t think they were voting for irresponsible spending. People didn’t think this administration would be as bailout-happy as they’ve been. People thought that the Senate would listen when we railed against the stimulus bill. People are convinced that they’ve been ignored by the man who promised that he’d be a postpartisan politician.
After the final article is written about the Tax Day Tea Parties has been written, it’s feasible that the animating factors were overspending and the Democrat’s betrayal of Main Street America.
This influx of new energy and new talent is likely to inject new life into small-government politics around the nation.
If the GOP plans on staying relevant, it better recognize that old-style politics are worthless. If the GOP wants to remain relevant, it better understand that ideas, not gotcha attacks, animate people.
Technorati Tags: Tax Day, Tea Party, Rick Santelli, Rob Neppell, Ed Morrissey, Glenn Reynolds, Porkbusters, Fiscal Restraint, President Obama, Bailouts, Janet Napolitiano, Extremists, Terrorists, DHS, Democrats
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
April 16th, 2009 at 9:27 am
The notion that Sandusky, Ohio is populated by right wing crazies, makes you wonder if Mr. Napolitano, and his boss aren’t a bit paranoid, delusional, or both.
Sandusky is about as all American as you can get; politically about even proportioned between liberal and conservative, industrial workers, small business, framers, and professional. People with their heads screwed on right who realize that the answer to incompetent government interference into every damned thing they do is not more incompetent government, but less government period; that the answer to increasingly higher and punitive tax policies is not more and higher taxes, but less government spending.
How do I know so much about Sandusky? Its in the part ofthe country I grew up in, thats all.