The Best and Brightest of the Right Wing

It seems that all of the fun stuff was happening out in Madison today, but I dutifully will report on the conservative teabagging that I witnessed in Milwaukee. As I passed Milwaukee City Hall I saw about five people with signs. A few hours later I went over to the downtown post office and saw two or three more teabaggers (or maybe they were the same people). I'm not sure if they were protesting the use of tax dollars to deliver our mail or if they were targeting the evils of mass transit and the Amtrak station next door. In any case, while I was doing my business downtown in the largest city in the state, I saw a grand total of 8 teabaggers.

After reading the AP report and the report at the Lost Albatross, I wished that I could have been in Madison today. It sounds like the corporate sponsored event drew a few thousand of the right wing's best and brightest. Take for example the genius behind the sign suggesting that President Obama was the antichrist. The AP reported that people were posing for pictures with him. They also quoted him saying that our President, "…needs to go, this is the first and last warning he'll get." Then there was the inspirational speaker that accused the governor of smoking crack and his state legislators of cooking and dealing drugs. And how could any right wing rally be complete without a sign claiming that the first African American President in our history was planning on somehow enslaving the poor oppressed white majority? This must have been hilarious to witness!

With all of the wild things going on during the teabagging of the Capitol, perhaps the craziest was the complaining about government spending. Why didn't any of these people, speakers, and politicians organize and repeatedly teabag George W. Bush who turned record surpluses into record deficits? Where was the outrage and where were speakers like Congressman Paul Ryan – oh that's right, he was voting for all of the Bush budgets.

Another crazy point was that we were all being taxed to death. While that may have been an official talking point, it is clearly not based in reality. President Obama's stimulus plan actually gives significant tax cuts to working people and he only raises taxes on the very wealthy – and even then only to Clinton era levels. I guess one could give the majority of the teabaggers credit for clamoring against their own tax cut and being willing to sacrifice it on the altar of the rich.

In the end very little is likely to come of this event. I hope that the yelling, frothing and sharing of conspiracy theories was therapeutic to the teabaggers today. But in terms of actual policy, today's antics will have very little impact. The bottom line is that this rabid contingent have become very sore losers. They have been rebuffed by the vast majority of Americans in both recent elections and in the policy debate. All polls show that the vast majority of the public supports the President and his agenda and reject the right wing failures of the past. All that being said, I would like to offer my sincere thanks to today's teabaggers, they are clearly the best and the brightest of the right wing and they are as funny as hell!