As April 15th approaches and Tax Day Tea Party Organizers go into last minute mode, it is becoming increasingly obvious there is a disconnected between DC and the heartland and this is reminiscent of Dan’s Bake Sale.
What is Dan’s Bake Sale you might ask? In 1993, a caller called into the Rush Limbaugh Show mentioning he was getting a Xerox’d copy of The Limbaugh Letter because his wife wouldn’t let him buy is own. You see, back then, there was a bake sale for everything and the great Rushbo suggest Dan host one of his own to buy the newsletter. As time went on, it became bigger and bigger and eventually was the conservatives version of Woodstock. 70,000 people flooded Fort Collins and Rush himself showed up.
Fast forward to today, and that same angst is out there about our country … if anything, it’s even worse. Thus, the Tea Party phenomenon is born. Wednesday, thousands will gather from NYC to Dallas/Fort Worth to small towns across the country. Organizers, in many cases, aren’t your typical political activists but the next door neighbor who doesn’t agree with federal bailouts and out of control spending. Many are even people who voted for Barack Obama who didn’t expect a dramatic shift from free market to socialist policies. Not the “change” they had in mind, as one caller told me.
Frankly, the heartland is mad and they aren’t going to take it anymore. Many Americans have grown fed up with DC and there is a growing divide between those inside the beltway with those of us in middle America. Groups like Let Freedom Ring USA are getting involved getting by telling everyone to text in and become part of the largest petition that will will be delivered to their Representatives, will plug into a new national network and receive issue alerts, and receive important alerts & news of critical meetings.
What these Tea Parties have become, In essence, is the new “Dan’s Bake Sale.” That, of course, isn’t making the lefties very happy at all. They don’t want anyone else being a “community organizers” and will do all they can to make sure they assist the main stream media in vandalizing it in the world of public opinion. As Greg Hengler pointed out Saturday, the lefties are mobilizing by having “citizen reporters” there ready to get some nut to say the wrong thing and take it out of context to fuel the MSM in their efforts to downplay this as a group of crackpots.
The Huffington Post has a different spin on this:
The Huffington Post is organizing “citizen journalists” to attend the protests, allegedly to “report.” Which means that they will try to find someone in a crowd who says something stupid, will post it on the internet, and build an argument around it trying to demonize the movement. And left-wing bloggers will react in unison like dogs responding to a whistle, about the “dangerous” and “violent” and “racist” tea parties. This tactic is as old as time; or at least as old as the internet.
While it is an old tactic, it is an easy one to do because the media really likes to be spoon fed instead of getting off their duffs and working.
These Tea Parties (I’ll be the emcee for the one in Fort Worth, TX) are a result of a groundswell of anxiety and people demanding to put their foot down and influence the course this country takes during Barack Obama’s four years as President. Anyone who dismisses this, including those on the right, do so at their own peril.
