re: #201 Charles

Tea party protesters will be dismissed as far right kooks. And letting a Paulian conspiracy monger organize them is certainly not going to do anything to change that.

OK, fair enough.

The former is already the attitude being put out by the mainstream media, with what little coverage it has given these tea-party protests.

I would also argue that it probably would be regardless of Paul-type involvement. Its reasonable to think that pro-Obama supporters (and that would include individuals as well as most mainstream media) would want to “push back” against anything that threatens his agenda.

Ultimately, the question is, dismissed by whom?

Again, what is the point of these protests? If the point is simply to vent steam from citizens angry at lousy gov’t fiscal policy, I don’t think anyone is hurt by that.

I think politicians dismiss these sorts of things at their own peril.

I also think its pretty self-evident that you don’t have to be some sort of lunatic or nutjob to think that the Federal gov’t is being fiscally irresponsible.

From what I have seen, none of these protests have turned violent, and most of them have in fact been fairly light-hearted. If you were at one, I don’t think you would get the impression that you were standing in a mob of right wing extremists (say, in contrast to the many LEFT-wing protests, covered here by Zombie and others).