The left is so thin skinned, after months of using homsexual innuendo to smear tea party activists, celebrating Dick Cheney needing back surgery, cheering Glenn Beck’s appendix and wishing it would kill him, etc., etc., etc. the left is demanding that Marsha Blackburn condemn the rhetoric used by tea party activists.

Blackburn is refusing.

What words do the left object to? “Socialist,” “evil,” “totalitarian,” etc.

These socialists are the exact same people who think twentysomethings who don’t get health insurance should go to jail for five years, but anyone and everyone who wants to kill kids with impunity should get a constitutional right to do so.

That is evil.

Republicans are - rightly - crowing this morning about the GOP’s victories in the New Jersey Governor’s race and a battery of races in Virginia from the Governorship on down and what they say about the turn in the national mood, if not in a pro-Republican direction then at least in a direction that’s sufficiently hostile to the Democrats that voters in states won by Obama and dominated by the Democrats in the last few years are willing to give individual Republicans another chance.

But the key word there, even in an across-the-board sweep like happened in Virginia, is individual. There remains an ongoing battle on the Right over how Republicans choose which candidates to support - who voters and the national party organs should back in primaries, when and whether to support third party candidacies, etc. It’s a battle intensified by Doug Hoffman’s loss in the NY-23 race after the NRCC-backed candidate, Dede Scoazzafava, ended up swinging the race to the Democrats when she endorsed Bill Owens. But in making sense of such debates, this is a point that cannot be stressed enough: no matter how favorable or unfavorable the overall national climate may be, no matter what ideological compass you want the party to follow, you can’t ever overlook the importance of the individual candidates and the conditions they run in. I said it in 2008 with regard to presidential campaigns, and it’s true as well of races for Governor, Senate or House: ideas don’t run for president, people do.

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The Politico has an article out today on tea party activists getting involved in their local political parties. I’ve been preaching on this for a while.

The reporter, Alex Isenstadt, interviewed me for his article and gave me the last word. I’m partial to my quote:

For some, supporting insurgent campaigns or waging primary bids just isn’t a strong enough signal to send to a Republican Party that has abandoned core conservative policies.

Erick Erickson, founder and editor of the influential conservative blog RedState, has urged Tea Party activists to “put down the protest signs” and stage takeovers of local Republican parties.

“Grassroots activists need to start infiltrating the party,” said Erickson. “The only way to start getting [the establishment] back is to start pounding them with every fist we have.”

Steven F. Hayward, writing in the Washington Post today, postulates that the conservative movement is currently brain dead.

It is a fashionable statement among those living in Washington, D.C. housed at think tanks. And I guess it is when think tannkers are pushing out columns on the lack of ideas rather than pushing out columns with ideas. Nonetheless, I generally agree with Steven Hayward that the movement needs to be reminded of its intellectual foundations. Hayward does, however, miss some critical points and flubs a few along the way.

I have a column on this in the Washington Examiner. My position is not that the tea party movement is brain dead, but that it reflects the conservative movement at an instinctual level.

What we see across the country are more and more people standing up realizing the direction we are headed is wrong. They are unorganized. They are unfocused. But they do not lack a “connection to a concrete ideology,” they just are not skilled or trained in the ideology.

There is no greater conservative sentiment than “stop.” Bernard Bailyn’s influential The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution laid out how conservative the American Revolution was.

The popular messages of “freedom” and “liberty” were not slogans of propaganda put forward by the 18th century equivalent of a 501(c)(4), but were very real and meaningful to the colonists on the street and in the fields.

While no one should expect a revolution against government from the tea parties, we should expect and hope for a revolution in conservative thought and an upheaval of at least the Republican Party as the tea party activists start putting down their protest signs and picking up campaign signs. Then, perhaps, they will move on to taking over their local political party.

“[T]he right must do better than merely invoking ‘markets’ and ‘liberty,’” Hayward writes. I agree. But I do not think it is the right per se invoking those words. Like the colonists in the late 1700s, it is the people invoking those words. The people have a fundamental understanding that those principles are good things and things on which the freedoms we enjoy in this country are premised.

You can read the whole thing here.

The woman* in question was at Norm Dicks‘ (D, WA-06, D+5) town hall, and dared the Congressman to take her money.  As in, she brandished a twenty dollar bill and told Dicks to come and get it, if he wanted her money so badly.

(See also Hot Air and Ace of Spades HQ.)

Which Dicks of course did not, being a Democratic career politician whose instincts have rusted over the years. What the woman meant by all of this is addressed below.

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On September 9, 2009, Barack Obama will address a Joint Session of Congress.

He wants to get the trains back on track for health care reform.

As Mike Allen notes, in 2001 President George W. Bush addressed a Joint Session of Congress as the first President to do so outside a State of the Union speech or a traditional first address.

The reason? International terrorism.

On September 9, Barack Obama will do it because of tea party activists. He set the stage and firmed up precedent by allowing his campaign arm, Organizing for America” refer to tea party activists as “right wing domestic terrorists.”

So great a threat are these tea party activists to his failing agenda, Obama will use the bully pulpit to strike back as he pushes for government control of American healthcare.

[UPDATE]: I’ve had a copy of the image sent to me that includes the URL.  The Google cache for the site is here; as you can see, not only did the image originate from the site, but the author him/herself was present at the Reston Town Hall, writing posts about it.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I think that we’ve established that the flier found below represents a deliberate attempt by the Left to incite racially-motivated hate against the Right.

I apologize in advance for the ugly and graphic nature of the image that will be available for viewing after the fold: I would prefer not to show it, but unfortunately somebody decided that it was suitable for distribution after the Reston, VA Town Hall - and I can’t actually talk about it without showing it.

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Via RS Reader izoneguy comes this heartwarming story of lowered expectations in the health care rationing wars. Yesterday, it was a nascent national movement dedicated to bringing The Audacity Of Hope And Change That You Can Believe In to the huddle masses; today, they’re trying to get enough people together for a decent potluck. And how is it working out for them?

“We had 10 people. Not a huge number, but good,” said Ms. Adkins, 55, who has been an Obama volunteer since the first day she saw him during a stop here on March 11, 2007.

Not that there’s anything wrong with potlucks; in fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the Tea Party folks to start planning to have them after the town halls. Save some money on takeout that way.  Of course, given the number of people who show up to the town halls it’d probably make sense to split them up into multiple potlucks, but that’s a logistical issue.

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…a Senator who is barely known for defeating Michael Steele in the 2006 election (honestly, Maryland does not have particularly interesting Senators; sorry about that) - anyway, if you can’t get Ben Cardin to sign off on your ‘astroturf’ rhetoric, well, you have a branding problem. Watch as he manfully attempts to avoid sweating on national television over the mess that his higher-ups have landed him in:

Cardin probably saw this poll (via @RobertBluey). 71% of adults want to attend a town hall involving health care, and are currently pegged at 50% for, 45% against. Turn those numbers into likely voters… and now you know why Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) suddenly doesn’t think that health care rationing protesters are ‘un-American‘ after all. Not that she’s planning to actually face all those protesters; even if they are also 2010 voters…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

It’s actually not that hard.

1. Figure out which professional agitation group typically runs faux-populist demonstrations in your area.
2. Subscribe to their email list and/or website.
3. DO NOT ENGAGE THEM IN CONVERSATION AND/OR DISCUSSION. You merely want to keep up with what they’re doing.
4. When they announce a protest, note the time and date.
5. Contact your local, actual conservative grassroots group.
6. On the day of the event, swamp them ten to one. (Via Instapundit)
7. Nicely.
8. Politely.
9. Smile a lot.
10. Bring cameras. Because they’re going to violate 7, 8, & 9 themselves, and you want that recorded.

These groups use strategic camera shots, a largely disinterested local press looking for local color, and a general lack of counter-protesters to come across as more powerful and effectual than they actually are. Right now they can get away with getting twenty people out to a local event and calling it “grassroots activism.”  Make it clear that they’re ridiculously outnumbered, and they’ll have to start spending more and more resources to accomplish their goals, such as they are.

Moe Lane

PS: None of this should stop people from having their own protests, of course. But counter-protests are much easier to put together… if you have the people to do it. We do. They don’t.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The tea party movement is in danger of imploding.

Go re-read that first sentence again please.

The implosion is not because there is no momentum. It is not because there is no desire for more. It is not because of a lack of enthusiasm. To be clear, there is plenty of enthusiasm, plenty of desire for more, and plenty of momentum.

The tea party movement is in danger of implosion because like many truly grassroots movements, there are a host of competing egos and entities all claiming the title of “leader” and in the desire to be leader, they are not willing to work with each other. Some are using it to advance their own agendas. Some entities, which otherwise are known for nothing, have tried to claim the tea party movement as their own. Other groups, which do massively good work and just want to help, are being shut out by the so called grassroots leaders who want all the glory and are deeply suspicious of credible organizations willing to help.

The tea party movement was and is a truly organic movement. The moment the left started screaming that they were astroturf, however, some of the new organizers ran as far away from the professional organizations willing to help out as they possibly could. That was a mistake. As I mentioned, there are some organizations out to establish themselves on the backs of the tea party activists. But there are many established organizations that are simply willing to help out with forms, insurance, technology, etc.

At the same time, a number of the individuals involved in the movement have deemed themselves indispensable to the effort. No one is indispensable and those who think they are should be driven off the stage. The indispensable people are those who showed up to the protests, giving up hours on the job or time with families. And the so called leaders of the movement will fail the movement when they begin to think this effort is about them and not about the people and the passion.

I would suggest all the players sit down and see if they can get some focus. If not, the movement will be hijacked. It should not come to that when there is as much passion as there is. So what is my suggestion?

Stop having tea parties and launch a coup. Go below the fold to find out what I mean.

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[UPDATE] “Say what you will about George W. Bush, he had a skin whose thickness wasn’t measured in Planck lengths.” I really wish that I had written that.

Because he’s sounding just a little bit self-conscious on the subject:

Obama targets tea bags at town hall

At his 100th-day town hall meeting in St. Louis Wednesday, President Barack Obama took direct aim at the anti-tax “tea party” demonstrations that have cropped up over the last month and took a veiled shot at the Fox News Channel, the cable news network closely associated with the protests.

[snip]

“Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”

See also (originally noted via FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog) the video below the fold:

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Yesterday, several of us were in on a roughly bi-weekly conference call organized by Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).

The main focus of the call yesterday was the recent “center of gravity” in the Energy and Commerce Committee regarding all the “climate change” debris and the various proposals spinning around the tornado of “Cap-and-Trade” (perhaps better described as “Cap-and-Tax”).

Rep. McCarthy brings “guests” to these conference calls - and since the focus of this call was energy, the special guest was Rep. Steven Scalise (R-LA). Rep. Scalise serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee - and, of course, he represents Louisiana…. where energy is a major issue.

Highlights below the fold….

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From the diaries by Erick.

Would Usama bin Laden and KSM (pictured, who gave up intel that saved LA from its 911 thanks to waterboarding), Iran’s Mullahs and MembersOnlyJacket-ijad, and Kim Jung Il prefer that CIA agents fear prosecution by succeeding administrations for the carrying out of lawfully given interrogation orders? That CIA lawyers fear such prosecutions for confidential legal opinions?

The answer is obvious, yet President Obama is criminalizing politics and the fighting of wars much like a new junta taking over after a coup:

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Promoted by Caleb … Why aren’t Sheehan and the like called extremists for protesting but veterans are? GOOD QUESTION!

It’s really too bad that the media won’t cover this video from Midnight Blue.

But hey, it’s probably for the best with him being a “right-wing extremist” (translation-veteran) and all, right?

This diary is cross-posted on The Minority Report.

It must be wonderful to work in the White House.  Who wouldn’t want that taxpayer-funded trip along the lush banks of DeNile?  True, there are those pesky revolts of the toiling masses. I’m sure pharaoh and his minions probably didn’t understand the ancient Israelites, either.

The president has asserted, unbelievably, that he was not aware of the tea parties.  His press secretary, so reports Tommy Christopher, is bemused that the partygoers are upset, having just received, by the grace of God and His Annointed Barack Obama, a tax cut.  

To be sure, Obama is more liberal than pharaoh.  He has given the masses a little more straw to make bricks.  Alas, he has upped the quota of bricks by 400%.  That is the estimated increase of the 2009 budget deficit vs 2008’s.  Like the ancient Hebrews, today’s taxpayers know a raw deal when they see one.

They know that a massive increase in spending to finance politically-connected pork and an orgy of nanny-statism is like getting a basket of fish that is just about to go off.  In the short run, a little nourishment from the first bites.  In the long run, just a lot of smelly garbage.  The Obama/Pelosi/Reid approach will inevitably lower the people’s standard of living and the opportunities for their children.  The way to grow the economy is to grow the private sector that creates our wealth; the government has never created a damn thing. 

The taxpayers realize that for all the talk about the rich, the middle class is stuck on a hamster treadmill of federal, state, local and property taxes.  They know that huge debt loads must either be paid off or society goes through enormous economic pain.  They know instinctively that the government should not imitate the fiscal habits of the mortgage industry.  And they know that eventually there are two disastrous ways to deal with mega-deficits: ruinous taxation or ruinous inflation.

So Mr. Gibbs, we have one response for you if you insist you are bemused by the public angst.  Who the hell does your administration think it’s kidding?

We’ll start out with Larissa, who wants to know where her check is:

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My RedState.com colleague Jeff Emanuel provided a prime example of just how deep the drive-by media is immersed in the tank for Obama, as CNN’s Susan Roesgen gets in the face of an American citizen exercising his Constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly yesterday.

HotAirPundit has a fine example of Ms. Roesgen’s other side. She was all sweetness and light just three months ago when the protesters were left-wingers:

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So the liberals and their media allies have taken to calling the Tea Parties ‘teabagging’ in an obvious attempt at innuendo.

Well, cool. What, did any of you expect to get asked why people are out marching today? Did anyone really expect an honest inquiry as to why so many folks are upset? Uhhh, no. Wasn’t ever going to happen. The same people who can’t debate in the arena of ideas weren’t suddenly going to change (har).

But it’s all good, and here’s why.

Like all liberals and democrats, they’ve overplayed their hand. Not a small feat when you consider that the Chicago machine has been in office for less than 3 months. They’ve pointed up and yelled “SCOREBOARD!” and assumed that the Bush hatred they fueled over the last 8 years meant that the vast majority of the people suddenly decided to view the world through the same prism that they do.

For me personally, I like my libs overconfident. Lazy. Stupid. Let them continue to live in the bubble they’ve concocted for themselves, the one that says that millions of Americans suddenly want their version of government. Don’t be discouraged when they dismiss you, call you crazy, a traitor, whatever. And resist the urge to say, “Better a tea bag than a d-bag” *looks knowingly at the other side*

After all, that’s their tactics. It’s who they are. They’re not here to exchange ideas. They’re here to tell you your ideas are the stupidest ones on Earth and that you have no right to object to anything they have to say. They’re here to reach into your life and tell you how to live it.

But what they fail to recognize is that today wasn’t something Rush Limbaugh cooked up. It wasn’t something that John McCain or Sarah Palin put together. It wasn’t even something that the Republican party organized. Nope, today was what America is all about: a bunch of people deciding to make their voices heard. Oh, some lib troll may try and claim that we tried to deny them their right to protest the Iraq war, but that’s a dishonest change of subject.

Today was about the folks sending a message. There are more of these parties coming. And let Janet Napolitano label everybody who went to these things as some kind of whacko. In this day and age, as much as looks like the libs control the message, the people can still read the charts and access the legislation. They know what’s going on.

And they know who’s doing it. Let’s build on today. Keep the momentum going. Start by not engaging the name-calling haters. Just nod and smile and get to work perfecting our ideas. And when 2010 rolls around, get out there and get people to pull the lever the right way.

Hopefully, the lazy/overconfident/stupid among the other side will wake up with one heck of a hangover. And with some elbow grease, Pelosi and Reid will have a heck a lot of problems to deal with in Congress.

Let’s do this.

Promoted by Brian Faughnan

On Wednesday, over 200,000 ordinary Americans gathered at nearly 1,000 locations around the country. Fed up with high taxes, increasing debt, and expanding government encroachment into their private lives, they gathered to express their displeasure with the Obama administration’s policies and to rally around conservative ideas to push for a new way forward for America.

From the 400 people squeezed onto a tiny grassy plot in Macon, Georgia, where I spoke at noon, to the 15,000 gathered in downtown Atlanta, grassroots activists and community leaders at every location joined together in the Peach State and across the country to spread a message of American values: individual responsibility, equality of opportunity, fiscal responsibility, and governmental accountability.

The reaction from liberal media and pundits to this widespread demonstration of and for traditional American values was predictable, to say the least. With that most ingrained and dependable of leftist traits — projection — on full display, liberals from California to Capitol Hill, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D), declared these hundreds of grassroots gatherings to be “astroturfed” –  events funded by “corporate front groups” –  and (according to one senior Democratic aide) attended by “neo-Nazis,” “secessionists,” and “racists.”

How far we’ve come from 2008, when “community organizers” were being compared to Jesus (and government executives to Pontius Pilate) and dissent and protest were being hailed as the highest possible forms of patriotism!

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