Tea parties: A true expression of discontent?

Were the tea parties grass-roots expressions of protest or carefully orchestrated partisan Republican events?

In Manhattan, one protester waved a flag with the 18th-century colonial slogan, “Don’t Tread On Me.” In Washington, one protester’s sign said, “We are spending money from people who are not even born yet, and that is immoral.” In 344 other cities across the country, said Wesley Pruden in The Washington Times, some 300,000 Americans chose April 15—tax day—to protest President Obama’s plan “to plunder the nation’s wealth in behalf of mismanaged banks, bankrupt automobile manufacturers, greedy states and cities looking for a handout, and anyone else who can think up a reason to tap the public till.” These “tea parties,” named for the Boston variety that preceded the American Revolution, represent democracy in action, said Glenn Reynolds in The Wall Street Journal. This mass uprising was not a partisan Republican event but a true grass-roots phenomenon of “ordinary folks using the power of the Internet to organize” against the free-spending Washington establishment.

Actually, said Joe Conason in RealClearPolitics.com, the tea parties were as artificial as AstroTurf. FreedomWorks, a conservative action group run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey—now, ironically, a corporate lobbyist—organized the protests. Fox News, meanwhile, shamelessly hyped them with more than 100 promotional ads. For all their sound and fury, the Tea Party “protests” represented nothing more than the bitter bleating of conservatives who ruled Washington for eight years, nearly doubled the national deficit, and were rightly thrown out of office. Besides, Obama has actually cut taxes for the vast majority of Americans, said USA Today in an editorial. This year, the average U.S. taxpayer will pay just 28.2 percent of his or her income in taxes—the lowest level in a generation.

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