Everyone knows about all the incoherent, vaguely libertarian teabagging parties that went on across the country April 15. My state was no different. According to friends (I suggested to one that she ought to start panhandling just to make things interesting), one was held down in Portland with a number of signs insisting no one tread on any of the protesters. I suspect they enjoyed the ease of walking on their publicly funded roads amidst all the publicly funded statures as their children went by on the buses heading to the publicly funded schools. Another was held in Augusta. My favorite part was this quote from one of the speakers:
Pete Harring of Maine Refounders, one of two Maine Tea Party groups, said the movement has more than 1,000 members in Maine. He noted that this year’s event was much larger than a similar gathering held a year ago.
“If we were all a bunch of liberals, we could have filled the whole park, ’cause none of them have any jobs,” he said.
What makes this hilarious is local knowledge. A huge number of people attending the rally weren’t educated, job-holding conservatives. They were the scummy leaches of Augusta, Maine who get $674 a month in Social Security “disability”; their ‘income’ goes largely to alcohol and drugs, and the only reason they attended the tax day get-together was that it had “party” in the title and they thought it would be a good excuse to imbibe their various intoxicants. Honestly. There’s no real parking near where the event was held – and that was fine. None of these people have cars, and they are actually commonly seen strolling the streets of Augusta (of course, mostly around the 1st of the month when the government sends them their checks).
And the thing is, the fact that these people have no idea what the rally is about doesn’t separate them very much from everyone else. The major problem the teabaggers have had is articulating what makes them angry. They’ve heard a lot of rhetoric from FOX Noise, but they don’t have much grasp on what’s actually going on and how government actually affects them.
I like that this video identifies these are Republican protesters. As much as the teabaggers want to deny it, they’re just the more radical wing of the Republican party (which is a feat in its own right).
Filed under: News, Politics and Social | Tagged: Maine Refounders, Pete Harring, Tea Party, Teabaggers | 10 Comments »