The Indonesian Muslim Turned Welfare Thug

This entry bids farewell to our teabagging friends, who seem to be confused about the purpose and size of their own rally in Washington. Mark Williams, organizer for the Teabag Express, said those things about President Obama on CNN with David Gergen and James Carville standing right by. He claimed that the 9-12 rally was not about healthreform but against all sorts of government programs embarked upon by the Obama Administration. He even threw in the tea party rage at President Bush's TARP program. He said that working men and women were angry that the executives and CEOs were profiting from government give-aways, while the poor working stiff was getting the shaft. There is alot of truth to this.

His language reminded me alot of the time my wife and I decided to attend a George Wallace for President rally in Durham, North Carolina in the 1970s. The "pointy headed limosine liberals" were ruining the country. The difference between the Wallace crowd and the Tea-baggers was the Wallace supporters were incredibly polite. We said, "They only put their sheets on after dark." The vitriol of the teabaggers against President Obama made the Left's rhetoric against George W. Bush seem tame.

Meanwhile Freedomworks, the lobby shop, on their website made repeated claims about the rally being against the health reform bill. They kept pointing to the size of the crowd compared to President Obama's townhall meeting in Minneapolis, which filled a stadium on six hours notice. Freedomworkers was trying to spin these two events as similar and vastly inflating their figures and downplaying the President's rally. Well which is it--a general protest against the American government and its elected President or an anti-healthcare rally?

The teabaggers have a serious credibility problems with numbers. All day long today I kept receiving e-mails about 1.5 million people attending. A quick check of the metro/bus records for passengers would only yield about 67,000 more riders(based on roundtrip) than the previous Saturday. Not all of these could be attributed to teabaggers. The Black Family Reunion first organized by civil rights great Dorothy Heights usually draws 500,000 to the mall during its events this weekend. More troubling was the American Thinker's piece by Thomas Lifson, which quoted a park commissioner that the event was one of the largest in the capital's history. The problem here was that the quote was taken from a Washington Post piece about Obama's inaugural. The added metro/ bus riders for two days prior to the event was 800,000. The total event draw over 2 million--with the crowd packed together from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial. The teabaggers sadly didn't come close. Another sad thing was their printing a photo of the Promise Keepers demonstration from the 1990s, which someone caught because the Museum of The American Indian was absent from the mall--it hadn't been built yet.

FiveThirtyEight published a interesting piece by Tom Schaller "Ron Paul Rallies.V.2009" which he analyzes the rhetoric of the teabaggers as the logical extension of the Ron Paul revolution--the entire anti-government focus and the amazing absence of anything related to foreign policy. He felt the abusive language was similar to the e-mails he received from Paulistas when he wrote about them for the Baltimore Sun. Others have noted the heavy presence of the Ayn Rand Institute, which would be in synch with a libertarian bent. "Going Gault" was a big favorite among the teabaggers.

Tom Edsell, writing in the Huffington Post, suggested that the Republicans could ride this populist tide back into power by focusing on the various bailout and the benefits received by the wealthy. This could well be true except for a few problems. The Republicans have come up with nothing remotely populist on the Hill. They could back the anti-usury bill limiting credit card rates to 15%; they could be aggressive in supporting mortgage reform and assistance to homeowners; they could break with tradition and foster confiscatory taxes against CEO pay and bonuses given out by financial institutions. They would have to forgo the immense of amount of funds from the healthcare industry. They can sound populist but Democrats would have to call them out on this.

One example of this attempt was their claim to want to protect senior citizens against Barack Obama. This was effective in stirring up rage at townhall meetings but then it became apparent that all those Republican leaders who pushed this line were on record for abolishing Medicare for a private voucher program.

Former President Jimmy Carter in an interview with Brian Williams came right out and said the animosity toward Barack Obama was racism and he said that it had bubbled up since the election.

Meanwhile up in Pittsburgh, the working men and women of the AFL-CIO hosted President Obama who again gave a rousing speech and pushed for healthcare reform. While President Obama pushed the public option, the AFL-CIO endorsed a single-payer program, which isn't even on the table. But it was welcomed shot across the bow.

As for teabaggers and the fringe, I'll only blog about the darker side of the extreme right as it continues to surface. The Republican Party so far is irrelevant as to any serious policy discussions. If I see anything, I bring them forth but I don't expect it. I suspect more race-baiting until the 2010 election. This is all what these activities are aimed for and nothing else.

There is nothing constructive for the public good coming out of any of this nonsense. Given all the studies and reports about the spiralling costs for healthcare in the coming years, would good other than for narrow partisan concerns would a defeat of health care reform for the country. If healthcare is not adopted this year, it will not see the light of day until we reach the point where healthcare will have to be rationed even more than it already is.