American Public Opinion vs. Teabaggers

In a review of research that indicates that American public opinion strongly disagrees with the conservative tennant that large income disparities are necessary for American prosperity, an educator puts last week's Tea Party protest in perspective:

Suppose we grant the claim (however generous, however imaginative) that the tea parties drew 250,000 supporters. Compare that with the turnout, not quite three years ago, for the “Day Without an Immigrant” rallies, which involved somewhere between 1 and 1.5 million workers – many of them undocumented, which meant that their decision to attend involved some risk of losing a job or being deported. By contrast, last week’s anti-Obama protest made no real demands on its participants, and came after weeks of free and constant publicity by a major television network. Teabaggery also enjoyed the support of prominent figures in the conservative establishment. Yet with all this backing, the entire nationwide turnout for the tea parties involved fewer people than attended the immigrant rallies in a single large city.

The events of April 15 may not have marked the death agonies of the Republican Party. But they certainly amounted to a case of profound rhetorical failure: a moment when old modes of persuasion lost their power. The claim to speak for the concerns of “ordinary Americans” choked on its own pseudo-populist bile. The tea bags were less memorable than the cracked pots. It was hard to watch the footage without thinking that the next Timothy McVeigh must be a face in the crowd – and wondering if his victims ought to bring a class-action suit against Fox News.