More Tea Party Follow-Up

I'm hearing reports that the number of people gathered at the Liberty Memorial tea party was at least 5,000, with some estimates much higher than that (and a few lower). Another 10,000 showed up to the tea party in Overland Park, KS, and there were at least two other smaller demonstrations in the hundreds, so Kansas City was well represented on this day.

To see the local coverage of the events, go here:

CBS
ABC
NBC
FOX

It's interesting to see how they liked to offer a dissenting opinion...do you recall getting a dissenting opinion of Cindy Sheehan's handful of people camping out across from George W. Bush's ranch in Texas? Do you recall getting a dissenting opinion when illegal immigrants and the open borders crowd took to the streets a couple summers ago?

No, and no.

Anyway, here are a couple pictures from the Overland Park, KS event (thanks, JC!):

Now, let's turn to the national stage. There's been a ton of fallout from these events. First, I'd like to point out that for all of the Obama administration's warnings of danger from 'right-wing extremists', I've not seen a single report of violence. That kind of thing only happens when the Left demonstrates.

As it just so happens, the Left also runs the media, which has been desperately spinning in an attempt to paint the Tea Party movement as something entirely different than it was. I should tell you that there are some content warnings below this point.

Let's start with award-winning journalist Anderson Cooper of CNN:

Nice. Rather than bothering to investigate, address, or report the substance of the tea parties, he resorts to crude insults. That is typical of the Left, so it is not unexpected, but it's still pretty disgusting to watch in real life.

The Right didn't take that sitting down, though. Greg Gutfield of Red Eye fired back:

Hey, at least he said his piece in the wee hours of the morning. But, in the midst of the flame-fest, Gutfield raises some excellent points:
1. Most of the left-wing demonstrations are funded and organized by radical groups like ACORN or MoveOn.org, and are essentially full-time protesters. The tea parties were populated almost entirely by citizens who have real jobs and real lives, and took time out to participate.
2. These CNN reporters never question their own protestors.
3. The media thinks normal Americans are alien beings, and they can't be bothered to get out and honestly associate them.
4. The media refuses to question the Obamessiah, and that means refusing to question his wealth redistributionist policies.

I'd really like to hear the Left address these points.

Others took a more subtle approach, simply trying to minimize the effects of the demonstrations, like James Wolcott:

As you can see, even when the C-SPAN anchor -- kudos to her for actually practicing the lost art of journalism -- presents him with clear evidence of widespread coverage, Wolcott is adamant that he is not going to acknowledge the importance of the tea parties. He apparently drank a big glass of Kool-Aid before going on-camera.

Just for the record, there were almost 350,000 American citizens demonstrating in tea parties across the nation, and the numbers are still rolling in.

Some were more aggressive, though. CNN's Susan Roesgen showed up to the rally in Chicago with an axe to grind. Take a look:

My, what great reporting! It's too bad she gets so angered by people decrying the Obamessiah that she too resorts to petty insults and ridiculous rhetoric. Anti-CNN? Orchestrated by Fox? She's a little full of herself, I think. CNN is fighting tooth and nail to maintain its stranglehold on the cellar of the ratings lists -- CNNs coverage was beaten by several times by the reruns of Fox's top three shows -- so it's hardly a project Fox would waste time on.

And, it's very interesting to see what happened when CNN stopped their cameras:

The reporter is clearly not up to mental snuff when faced with a self-employed business owner, and gets her intellectual butt handed to her on a silver platter. Note the typical liberal response at being nailed to the wall: name-calling ('antagonistic').

But it didn't stop with just the liberal media - the liberal Democrat leadership got into the act, too:

But in an interview on Fox TV in San Francisco, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) chalked up the GOP grass-roots effort as “AstroTurf.”

“This initiative is funded by the high end; we call it AstroTurf, it's not really a grass-roots movement. It's AstroTurf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class,” Pelosi said.

Other House Democratic leaders took a different tack: One senior aide has been circulating a document to the media that debunks the effort as one driven by corporate lobbyists and attended by neo-Nazis...

In addition, the tea parties are “not really all about average citizens,” the document continues, saying neo-Nazis, militias, secessionists and racists are attending them. The tea parties are also not peaceful, since reporters in Cincinnati had to seek “police protection” during one of the events, it states.

The Weekly Standard observes the following:

There probably aren't many Democrats who genuinely believe the charges levied by their leadership. Nate Silver guesstimates that about 250,000 people have attended the tea parties - so far. Do Ms. Pelosi and other Democrat leaders think they're all neo-nazis?

If this is a conversation they want to have, however, perhaps Ms. Pelosi can explain the role of Marxists and North Korean sympathizers in the U.S. anti-war movement, or discuss how George Soros bought such influence in the Democratic party. It's not a debate that would help Democrats, since it's relatively easy to show the role of fringe extremists in the Democratic grassroots.

One caution: don't buy into the hype of a third party. Rush Limbaugh suggests that this may bubble up at some point, and he encourages conservatives not to entertain the idea. Quite simply, they never win elections. Even if a third party candidate would get lucky enough to win the White House, they would have no supporting party in Congress, and thus would be shackled from day one. No, the direction this needs to take is to reform the Republican party, vote out the big-government types that have led the party for the past decade or so, and vote in true conservatives who have demonstrated fiscal responsibility, traditional values, and core principles.

The bottom line on the tea parties is that there is substantial anger and frustration boiling up throughout the country in people of all stripes, and there will be an accounting for it sooner or later. These tea parties weren't so much about Republican versus Democrat, but rather about the irresponsibility of government in general. The first shot has been fired in this battle between the elites in the government/media establishment and the people of America. What happens next? We'll have to watch it play out.

Unfortunately, only one side is engaged on an intellectual and policy level. The liberal Left simply can't comprehend the idea that large numbers of American citizens are angry about the irresponsibility of our 'leaders' in Washington. In their utter failure to construct meaningful arguments in favor of the policies that are angering so many people, they resort to insults and mockery.

Isn't it good to know they're the ones running the country? How could anything possibly go wrong?

There's my two cents.