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April 19, 2009 in City
Spin Control: Both parties need to read Tea Party leaves
Inland Northwest Democrats who belittle the Tea Party gatherings of last Wednesday do so at their peril.
Inland Northwest Republicans who embrace them wholeheartedly could be in for a few surprises.
In terms of number of venues and total participants, the demonstrations outstripped any protests in recent history.
The Spokane event may not have been significantly larger than the city’s biggest Iraq War protest in 2003. But even if both attracted between 2,000 and 3,000 people – crowd estimates are difficult and notoriously unreliable, so there’s no sense debating which had more people – it’s important to remember that Wednesday’s Tea Party in Spokane was one of about a dozen within a two-hour drive.
There may have been another 1,000 over time in Coeur d’Alene’s City Park, plus gatherings in Colville and Colfax, Priest River and Moscow. If total numbers count, Tea Partiers win.
So what? some Democrats have sniffed, rather derisively. When you have Fox News and talk radio and conservative Web sites promoting an event, of course people will turn out. These Tea Partiers who protest taxes don’t seem to understand that taxes for the vast majority of the public will go down if President Obama gets his way, other Democrats added.
This is a mistake Democrats often make, countering an emotional argument with a process-based response. The fact is that a certain segment of the public was fed up enough last Wednesday to skip lunch, leave work early or have dinner late so they could cheer speakers, shake fists or wave signs in protest.
But the real question for Republicans is: Protest what?
The first Tea Parties earlier this year were conceived as a protest against federal bailouts and deficit spending. They wanted to evoke one of the few images grade-schoolers remember from their American history book, that a bunch of colonists dressed up like Indians, jumped aboard a British ship and dumped stuff into Boston Harbor in 1773. Liberals and progressives, proving again the propensity to counter emotion with process, delighted in pointing out that the colonists were rebelling against taxation without representation, while the Tea Partiers seemed to be rebelling against the opposite: taxation with representation.
By tea time Wednesday, the parties had become a merge point for a wide range of grievances that protesters wanted redressed through their peaceable assembly. Government spending was high on the list, but some were against all taxes, others were against the income tax. A few signs suggested “tax the millionaires” which, interestingly enough, is sort of what Obama is proposing.
The Federal Reserve came in for criticism, as did paper money, and at least one speaker held forth on the virtues of the gold standard. Any suggestion of gun control was met with derision, so were most mentions of bank executives, multinational corporations, international treaties, AIG, politicians or bureaucrats.
The Stars and Stripes were much on display, but so too were several versions of the Gadsden Flag, with its coiled rattlesnake and “Don’t Tread on Me” slogan. And there were a few rugged individualists with the obligatory “Where is John Galt?” signs. (Note to liberals: That’s from Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” but if you have to ask, there’s not enough space to explain it.)
More than anything else, the Tea Parties showed a wide range of dissatisfaction with “the way things are.” For out-of-power Republicans, the challenge will be uniting as much of this disparate dissatisfaction as possible into a cohesive voting bloc. How can they let the gold-standard bearers talk about eliminating the Fed before Main Street business types walk? Can they navigate a course between international trade the region’s farmers need and the parts of NAFTA and CAFTA some populists despise? Can they make a case that the deficit spending a Democratic White House and Congress is practicing now is philosophically different from the deficit spending a Republican White House and Congress executed before them?
If not, they may split the “loyal opposition” with the Libertarians, the Constitutional Party, the Reform Party or another party that surfaces.
Toward the end of the Spokane rally, Rick Melanson, a longtime political observer and sometime activist, looked out over the crowd and wondered. Did it feel like the rallies for independent candidate Ross Perot in 1992? Or like the coalescing of conservatives around Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America in 1994?
That truly is the question for Republicans. Perot split their vote in 1992, and helped elect Bill Clinton. Gingrich solidified their vote two years later, and gave them the U.S. House for the first time in a generation.
Spin Control is a weekly political column by veteran reporter Jim Camden, who can be reached at (509) 459-5461 or jimc@spokesman.com. Spin Control is also a Web log with daily posts and videos at www. spokesman.com/blogs/spin control.
Romney/Paul split weighing on county GOP 
Lucy on April 19 at 8:29 a.m.
I don’t believe the Republicans and others at the “tea party” were actually protesting taxes and debt, but rather the fact that they are no longer in power. If government spending and deficits were the real issue they would have been in the streets when Bush was running up the debit with war spending.
Charlie on April 19 at 10:52 a.m.
In my opinion what started the protest chain of events was the thought of having to help pay someone else’s mortgage payment because they bought more house than they could afford. I know it ticks me off that the “bailout” money went to assist missed payments. Protesting government waste is not new to me, I’ve put my 2 cents in for the last 30 years unfortunately to no avail. I’ll keep after it, we all should. Send letter, if enough participate,maybe something will change!
Megan_B on April 20 at 8:41 a.m.
The media really turned this into a much bigger deal than it was. If you look at the actual number of people who showed up to these events- they simply aren’t “staggering.” 70% of the U.S. population want President Obama to succeed, the 30% left over need to quit whining and offer a helping hand. No one is really happy about bailing out the banks, but it simply makes more sense than handing checks to irresponsible consumers. When Bush handed out the “stimulus” checks, we cried: “Not free money, jobs!” But that was just too complicated. What the administration is attempting to do is create jobs, while at the same time investing in long over-do programs (health care, education, energy efficiency, etc.) In the beginning this is going to take some taxes, but the results will be more jobs, an improved economy, and a greater sense of community effort for the intelligent individuals that offer to pitch in.
Whippersnapper on April 20 at 9:49 a.m.
These commenters illustrate the reason there’s a disconnect in this country. The Democrats believe that annual deficits under George Bush were given a pass by blue collar Americans and the tea party movement is hypocrisy. But Bush was not given a pass, people were angry about the spending, NOT the illegitimacy of the wars, as Democrats were. Yes, there were not protests on the scale of last week, but the spending wasn’t on the scale proposed by President Obama. While we were on our way to almost a trillion in deficit spending, including the wars, TARP I and some early stimulus spending, Obama has put nearly two trillion in spending on the books in his first 90 days, including more bailouts. Obama promised no more pork and what do we get? 9000 earmarks in the stimulus bill alone, from both Republicans and Democrats. Can people disagree with that? Even a little bit? Pretty please?
Set that all aside (I know most of you can’t), and look at the overall picture: We have been paying our taxes since 1980 or so and we still have 12 trillion dollars in federal debt. So has any administration of any party been honest about what they’re spending on our behalf? How long until the government’s monetary house of cards comes falling down?
jimc on April 20 at 5:16 p.m.
A posting of this column over at Huckleberries brought in even more comments.
Join the online conversation at
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/hbo/2009/apr/20/camden-ds-rs-misread-tea-leaves/
Jim Camden/Spin Control