Until this weekend, I gave the Tea Partiers the benefit of the doubt. On principle, I support protests. I think they’re good for democracy. Besides, I didn’t want to believe these anti-tax, anti-Obama demonstrators were the rabid, right-wing radicals Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and other liberals made them out to be. I assumed most of these demonstrators had mainstream political views, that they were garden-variety conservative dissenters who disagreed with the president’s liberal policies. Still, I wanted to be sure. I wanted to know for certain.
So, on Saturday, when tens of thousands of Tea Partiers descended on Washington for what The New York Times called “the largest rally against President Obama since he took office,” I made sure I was there. Armed with a microphone and an MP3 recorder, I waded through the throngs for three hours, asking questions like a good journalist. I spoke to about thirty different people, each for at least five to ten minutes. But what I discovered was disturbing. The truth is, the Tea Party movement represents the fringe of American politics today.
Almost all of the protesters I interviewed see President Barack Obama and his policies as dangerously outside the mainstream, which, ironically, makes them outside the mainstream. Obama espouses nothing more radical than Franklin Delano Roosevelt-style liberalism. But Beth Fisher, who said she was from West Virginia, believes Obama has a fascist agenda. “I think his background shows that he has that agenda,” she told me seriously. “It’s very clear.”
Sure, she sounds crazy. Most Republicans wouldn’t defend those comments, yet I heard this sort of thing all afternoon.
I spoke to a woman named Karen from Safety Harbor, Fla. She held a sign that read, “Obama’s Built A Marxist Government. He’s a liar!” When talking with me, she called the president a dangerous man.
Fear of Obama appeared to be a general theme. I stopped one woman whose sign warned of “a scary, scary man with a scary, scary plan.” She worries about a socialist takeover. She refused to give me her name.
I also met several Birthers. I didn’t have to walk far to find several “Where’s the birth certificate?” posters held by people who still, despite overwhelming, irrefutable evidence to contrary, insist the president isn’t a legal citizen. It’s infuriating. I didn’t even bother trying to reason with these people.
Obama critics reading this article might assume I have cherry picked my quotes. They might think, as I did previously, that most Tea Partiers aren’t extremists. I wish that were true, but facts are facts.
There will come a time when the conservative movement will get back on its feet. But the American right isn’t there yet. For now, the loudest voices of opposition to the Obama agenda will be those I heard on Saturday. These voices will scream “socialism,” and “fascism” interchangeably. They will babble about death panels. They will compare the president to Adolf Hitler. Some will get media attention, their five minutes of fame. But in the meantime, they will also miss an opportunity to present new ideas and alternative solutions, which might make America better.
Graham Vyse is a junior in the School of Public Affairs and the editorial page editor for The Eagle. You can reach him at gvyse@theeagleonline.com.
