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What always amazes me is how any defense of the tea parties always revolve around some meta discussion about political participation. The defense is never about how their points a, b, and c make sense. It is always about how they shouldn't be marginalized, how they have the right to speak, how they are doing just like "the left" did, and etc. etc.
The closest we ever come to discussing the tea parties themselves is when someone points out that there are reasonable members that are a part of the movement, how not everyone is a loony, and sometimes even how the loony wing is a minority. And I am sure those are all possible things. But here's a social movements 101 protip: the message that matters is of the movement, not of individuals. And right now the message being put forth by the tea parties IS the message of the loonies and the fringe. So it doesn't matter what the reasonable people in the movement think, it matters what the message of the movement itself is, as framed by its leaders, its backers in the media, and so on.
And that message right now is as misguided and contradictory as they come. This mixture of taxation protest coupled with pleas of more military spending and a defense of medicare simply doesn't make sense, just as the "Indonesian Muslim" attacks...
Unfortunately, it is a sad statement about American democracy that those who oppose Obama for more legitimate reasons feel like they have no choice but being co-opted by loonie wing of the republican party.
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