Meet the Radical Right--Tea Party...Orlando

The faces of Right-Wing Extremism
Orlando, FL 4/15/09

I took Caleb to the Tea Party gathering this evening in downtown Orlando. Generally I'm terrible at guessing crowd numbers but 'well over a thousand +' would seem to do it. Nationwide it seems the various events attracted close to 250,000 people...not shabby for a grassroots effort.

The Juice Box™ media, in concert with various Sippy Cup™ bloggers, have promoted the meme that the Tea Party movement has been orchestrated by the dastardly hands at Fox News, American Solutions, and Dick Cheney. Not Dick Cheney. I'm making that up, but is anyone seriously surprised his name hasn't come up somewhere...along with that of AIPAC, various and sundry zionists, or the LDS Church? Any boogeyman will do. Seriously, more than 500 events nationwide had been organized before the first mention on Fox, or any other news outlet for that matter. It's almost as if the Sippy Cuppers™ lied forgot about what a useful tool Meetup, and other forums for grassroots organizing are...that is before MoveOn, Code Pink, and their other "grassroots" organizations like ACORN "organize" national protests with other people's money.

Just remember to take a page, or in this case, a number from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals Progressives:

“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.”

That seems to fit the message coming from the teabaggers out there. Ouch! Small wonder the "teabagging" meme is being promoted by people like Anderson Cooper, Glenn Greenwald, and Andrew Sullivan (among others)...three men who have generally had more cock in them than a Tyson Chicken processing facility.

When all is said and done, what remains is how will the Tea Party movement will aid in building bigger coalitions that can help bring back a modicum of fiscal sanity to Washington. I have my doubts that on a national level the excitement over the effort can be channeled into long term electoral success, the GOP is still too out of touch to even realize what's happening at the peon level. So, what happens next, if anything? Some interesting proposals are floating around out there. Read and participate if the spirit moves you.

Mike