I have read through some of the material linked to in Ben’s last post and my sense is a lot of people in the blogosphere (including the left side) are taking the tea party protests a little too seriously, pondering the possible grass-roots origins of the “movement” and speculating that this may (finally) be the right’s answer to the Web 2.0 innovations (blogs, mobile devices, YouTube & other user-directed web sites) of the Dean and Obama campaigns. I am not so sure.

There may be an element of the right borrowing from the left in the protests, and I gather that the protesters did organize themselves through Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, but the major borrowing would seem to be from the goofy-to-intentionally-annoying “street theater” approach and extreme rhetoric that have long been popular with the latter-day peace movement, radical environmentalism, the 9/11 “Truth Movement,” and other hippie and post-hippie  causes. Only with tricorn hats instead of tie-dyed shirts.

Politically, it is a hopeful sign for liberals and Obama that the right has turned to protesting like this, it seems to me. Such tactics have never been been the road to majority support in this country, at least not since the civil rights movements of the 1960s, the most politically successful of which emphasized dignified displays of solidarity over circuses of political self-expression. Funny signs and crazy costumes are good for getting publicity, at least for a while, but the message that most average citizens seem to take away from such scenes is that the cause in question must be as freakish and cranky and unappealing as its supporters. Indeed, one might argue that colorful street protests of this type are the natural mode of expression of hopelessly-outnumbered gadfly causes that seek attention for their viewpoint rather making any real attempts at persuasion.

As usual, Jon Stewart had it exactly right, emphasizing the exchange of left-right roles involved and suggesting which role is the likely winning one:

Even beyond the right’s turn to unpopular hippie tactics, it is hard to see how colorfully-delivered but utterly boilerplate conservative complaints about high taxation in general are going to catch fire at a time when taxes have not actually been raised above the historically-low rates of recent times. As this excellent Chicago Tribune piece points out, Americans generally seem far more concerned now about the spiraling economy than vintage 70s tax concerns. Moreover, the possibility of needing some transfer payments themselves, or at least that they might actually benefit from government programs, seems to have dawned on more middle-class Americans than at any time I can remember. That is what has the Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman set so exercised. That, and other stuff I will mention in my next, on why we might need to take some of the attitudes animating the tea parties very seriously indeed.