...wins a primary or manages to not completely alienate voters, it's a major news story? But when real progressives defeat middle-of-the-road Blue Dog Democrats (as was the case in New Hampshire last night), it gets short shrift, hardly meriting a yawn?
If you were to look at this morning's New York Times, you'll be treated to a breathless lead story, above the fold, of Tea Baggers like Christine O'Donnell winning the GOP primary against moderate Republican Congressman Mike Castle.
It's not even as if a Palin endorsement as one given to O'Donnell is an automatic guarantee of success. Brian Murphy got Palin's nod and still got his ass handed to him by fellow Republican Robert Erlich in the Maryland gubernatorial race. So what's the common denominator and why is the MSM treating this groundswell of opposition as if it's on a par with the populist movement that swelled around Obama three years ago? Especially since a typical nose count of Tea Bagger hatefests can be counted in the hundreds rather than the thousands (over 70,000,000 of us voted for President Obama, it ought to be noted).
First off, the only common denominator besides badly-spelled signs is dissatisfaction with the establishment GOP and government in general. What we're seeing is the emergence of a fringe group, the Michele Bachmann/Steve King feathers of an already insane right wing. And all the MSM are doing is magnifying the importance and scope of the Tea Bagger "phenomenon" at almost Fox "News" proportions and, in the process, creating the same echo chamber as the one that deafened us into submission in the 2002-2003 run-up to war with Iraq.
Secondly, I think it's still easy to laugh off the efficacy of a badly educated, willfully ignorant and criminally stupid and racist element such as the Tea Baggers because O'Donnell's primary victory last night came from just 57,000 voters. Even in tiny Delaware, that's just a small fraction of the entire electorate.
Therefore, one can conclude that the Tea Baggers are, #1 artificially embiggened by the MSM much in the way that outnumbered troops are instructed to make noise when approaching the enemy so as to appear twice their actual size and, two, their disaffection with government (if genuine, an understandable one shared by progressives) is actually little more than thinly-veiled racism. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to speculate that if Biden, Dodd or Hillary Clinton won the presidency the Tea Party would be small enough to stuff inside Newt Gingrich's mouth.
But the "vast left wing conspiracy" that is the "liberal media" is so enamored of the Tea Baggers, they treat them in a quasi-romantic sense as if they're so many Scarlett Pimpernels and that it's 1789 Paris all over again.
Let's also not forget one other thing: If the Tea Baggers are throwing out the so-called Old School Reagan Republicans, the New School Republicans are ready to school them as to the true nature of political scumbaggery. Scott Brown, another Tea Bagger favorite here in Massachusetts, gladly accepted their money and support then in the first vote he cast in the Senate, he sided with the Democrats and so far has been voting like a pretty moderate Republican. What makes them think it can't happen again?
Don't forget one more thing: When revolutionaries stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, there were little more than a small handful of drunks to free. The pundits and historians of the time got it wrong as they always do with historical events then and they're getting it wrong now. And George Santayana either weeps or chuckles.
