First of all, no, they aren’t dead. They’ll be showing up again somewhere I’m sure. In business a “post-mortem” is an analysis that occurs after a project has been completed and rolled-out; an investigation of what went right, and what went wrong.
So, what went right:
- A grass-roots effort started by a schoolteacher in Seattle was able to draw in a sizable amount of protesters in over 800 cities in the US; something that has historically been difficult at best for Conservatives. We’ve proven that the conservative base can, in fact, be motivated. And, unlike the protests against AIG executives, the Tea Parties actually drew more protesters than reporters.
- The protests were peaceful. I saw no reports of vandalism or arrests and we didn’t have idiots laying down in the streets and no business was disrupted. This is a clear differentiation from the majority of liberal protests I have seen in the news.
And, of course, what went wrong:
- Poorly chosen date. By choosing to hold these protests on “tax day” the message was muddled. While “tax day” is a high-profile day and appears to be a reasonable choice, the fact is that the protests were not anti-tax and the choice of day allowed confusion over that fact.
- The message was allowed to get lost in the noise. The point of the protests was to come out against excessive governmental spending, especially the ridiculous amounts of pork-barrel spending that were slipped through under the guise of the “Stimulus” bill. Many media reports, however, referred to the Tea Party participants as “Tax Protesters”.
- Allowing the opposition to frame the message. Ridiculous and unfounded claims of astroturfing went largely un-refuted and the media were able to frame the event as a protest against taxation when the fact of the matter is that taxation is only a peripheral issue. Yes, most (all?) of the participants in these protests feel that taxes are too high, but they view that as a symptom, not the disease. The core of the protests was excessive governmental spending (something that, as I pointed out yesterday, most people seem to agree is bad), not the tax rates in and of themselves. This message was not clearly communicated and the choice of tax day for the protests only further inhibited the ability to make this fact clear.
Overall, I am inclined to consider these events a qualified success. The Tea Parties accomplished something that has not been managed in a long time; they gathered significant numbers of conservatives together through grass-roots efforts in over 800 locations across America. For a group that historically does not show up to protest anything, that’s huge. The lack of vandalism or disruption of business is also huge. We’ve shown that conservatives are not like the idiots who lay down in the middle of the street to stop traffic or chain themselves to buildings. We’ve proven that conservatives are committed to peaceable assembly which is a stark contrast to many other protest movements that advocate disruption and confrontation.
Still, there remains much to do. As Repurblican pointed out a few days ago, the message needs to crystallize and be disseminated more clearly. The focus needs to come out clearly and with strong emphasis. Counter-claims need to be repudiated forcefully and immediately and this, as yet, has not been accomplished. Without a strong center, this movement will get hijacked and it will peter out. We’ve reached the point where it truly becomes do or die. From here on out we need to repudiate the kooky hangers-on, clarify the message, and keep moving; if yesterday’s protests become an end rather than a single step, all effort towards these Porkulus protests will have been for naught.