Tea Partied Out

Looks like the GOP left the Teabaggers out to dry yesterday.

Preliminary news reports from Saturday’s Tea Parties suggest public participation fell far short of the April protests. In Morristown, NJ, attendance was down by a third compared to this spring’s event. In Fort Lauderdale, FL, the Sun-Sentinel reports a crowd of “hundreds,” compared to an estimated 5,000 in April.

And in Syracuse, NY — where protesters waved the American flag upside-down — organizers had expected 1,000 people to show, but only 200 did.

Yet warm weather and patio parties may only be a part of the explanation. Unlike with the April protests, the Republican party’s establishment didn’t throw its weight behind this latest round of rallies.

“The collaboration between the official Republican establishment and the Tea Parties has not lasted into June,” writes the Washington Independent. “The RNC has no plans to get involved with any Tea Parties. A spokesman for [House minority leader] John Boehner (R-OH) … said that [Boehner's] holiday plans were private but would probably not include Tea Parties. [Newt] Gingrich will not attend any of the Tea Parties, although he recorded video messages for events in Birmingham and Nashville “at the request of the respective organizers’.”

Part of the reason for the more subdued atmosphere this time around may have had to do with the negative coverage the Tea Parties received in the media — Fox News excepted.

“There was a novelty last time that isn’t there now,” media analyst Seton Motley told the Independent. “Also, if you’re talking about the networks that made light of the Tea Parties back in April, they might have realized that opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference.”

But it may be Fox News’ muted coverage this time around that may explain much of disparity between April’s protests and Saturday’s. The Independent notes that, in April, Fox sent five of its highest-profile anchors and correspondents on the road to cover the protests, but this time around, “sources at Fox … confirmed that no anchors would be attending and that the attendance and news value of the events looked to be lower than that of the April rallies.”

There are a number of reasons why the Teabaggers got dunked yesterday. The novelty factor, sure, but I think a lot of people at the last tea party protests in April really were surprised to see just how far over the edge some of the protesters were. That scared them off, as it should. Some of these protests were expected to turn into recruitment rallies for white supremacists.

That's what scared off both FOX News and the GOP. Nobody's going to risk their career when they would be the big draw at a tea party as a FOX News celebrity or GOP luminary and find out that neo-nazis have the place staked out. That'll look good on the resume, yes?

Oh, don't get me wrong, there are GOP luminaries and talking heads who like hanging out with racists jagoffs, but not the ones seriously considering a run at Obama's job in 2012, (well, those that are left, that number is dwindling weekly it seems.)

So yes, the Teabaggers went down in flames again. Honest dissent against the government is one thing, in a healthy democracy it will always exist. But the Tea Parties were manufactured astro-turf, not a grassroots movement. Americans figured that out too, and this time they stayed away.

The party, it seems, is over.