As 'Tea Parties' lose steam, fringe conspiracists step up to the fore
By David Neiwert Monday Jul 06, 2009 10:00am
If it wasn't already obvious that the right-wingers who organized the Tax Day Tea Parties vastly overstated their actual significance -- except as a harbinger of the slide towards right-wing populism -- then this past weekend should lay any doubts to rest.
Even before the holiday weekend, it was clear that the planned 2nd edition of the Tea Tantrums Parties was going to be somewhat less than energetic. David Weigel at the Washington Independent observed that a lot of this had to do with mainstream support peeling away:
But the collaboration between the official Republican establishment and the Tea Parties has not lasted into June. The RNC has no plans to get involved with any Tea Parties. A spokesman for Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who jaunted around northern California to attend several Tea Parties, said that his holiday plans were private but would probably not include Tea Parties. Gingrich will not attend any of the Tea Parties, although he recorded video messages for events in Birmingham and Nashville “at the request of the respective organizers,” according to spokesman Dan Kotman.
Media coverage has also gotten a little bit more scarce. Coverage on Fox News has largely been limited to interviews with Tea Party organizers on the network’s morning shows. While sources at Fox would not discuss their plans for covering the weekend events, they confirmed that no anchors would be attending and that the attendance and news value of the events looked to be lower than that of the April rallies. Tea Party organizers are counting, instead, on local news coverage and on distributed reporting such as the conservative news site PajamasTV, which hosts an “American Tea Party” show and has asked readers to submit their own videos from their rallies.
Part of the dynamic of right-wing populism is that, as whatever mainstream backing it gathers initially peels away, its more radical elements rise to the fore. And indeed, the Anti-Defamation League warned beforehand that extremists were likely to be making their presence felt at these gatherings:
