Pin the Bogeyman On the Tea Party

Some excerpts from Bill Frezza at RealClearPolitics:

Have you watched with amusement as various political commentators have tried to demonize the amorphous Tea Party movement by outing behind-the-scenes bogeymen allegedly pulling the strings of this latter day Great Awakening? 

Sarah Palin. Glenn Beck. Dick Armey. Newt Gingrich. Grover Norquist. Jack Abramoff. Lyndon LaRouche. The John Birch Society. The list goes on.

 None of it is sticking.

From time to time one professional politico or another may try to jump out in front of the parade. But everyone knows that the Tea Party has no leader, and with a little luck never will. That's because it's not a political party. In the best tradition of the American Revolution, it's an angry mob. Hence, the name.

The Tea Party is not a political party. It does not seek power and money. The Tea Party is the primal voice of "No." It is the embodiment of the admonition that when you find yourself at the bottom of a hole you should stop digging. It is the realization that when a giant Rube Golberg machine starts to come apart at the seams, patching it up with more hairy contraptions designed to hold the monstrosity together until the next election almost always makes matters worse.

The Tea Party does not want Congress to do the People's business. It wants the People to do the People's business, each minding his own.

 The Tea Party will never actually elect its own candidates to office. If it tries it will implode. But it may find its voice and change the course of history if it can keep its message both simple and faithful to the one and only issue that unites its members.

Read it all - SP