Originally Posted by Willravel

Pan, what the people I spoke to said wasn't vague and up to interpretation. It was perfectly clear. When a 45 year old, slightly overweight man in a blue polo says, out loud, "No taxation without representation!", he's not speaking in secret libertarian code. He's not speaking to his concerns about TARP or waxing rhetoric about the nature of government regulation, he's communicating for all to hear that he's stupid. I need you to understand that I didn't go there with my liberal blinders on. I went there specifically to find out why other people were there, and I spoke to everyone I could. I spent about an hour and a half just talking to people. I refuse to believe that the libertarians amongst the GOPers were the quietest.

I saw them, I know what the Tea Party here was. It had nothing to do with libertarianism and everything to do with people willing to follow whatever they think conservatism or Republicanism is asking of them.

Most of the people that attended wouldn't have even known of their existence had it not been for the Republican part of the media. Had it not been for Fox News, Rush, etc. they would not have known that protesting was okay for non-commies.

I don't want to alarm you, but the right in this country doesn't really have an active, grassroots underground just waiting to spring into action. They take their clues from the party representatives in media.

The libertarians do have a growing grassroots strength, but the Tea Party movement simply isn't libertarian, though I'm sure more than a few libertarians showed up not realizing that the Bush Republicans were in charge and were creating the messages.