Raw Story | April 19, 2010
Stephen C. Webster
The tea parties are all about expressing American freedom and coming together to celebrate and protect God-given liberties. This, of course, is why anyone who disagrees must be screamed at until silenced.
As right-wing radio host Matt Walsh learned recently, if you challenge mob mentality, you get the mob itself. In this case, if you trash Sarah Palin in front of her biggest fans, you might just get called an “infiltrator” and booed off stage.
Walsh, who DJ’s for 93.5 The Beach in Georgetown, Delaware, was speaking to a group of tea party protesters on April 15 when he made the mistake of encouraging the crowd to work toward specific goals and support independents over Republicans.
The crowd became incredulous, booing and jeering Walsh as he began asking whether free speech really meant something to the tea parties.
“Seriously, what everybody needs to understand here is that, number one, Republicans are not the answer,” he’d said. “They are not, period. Do not vote for a Republican. Please, I beg you, do not vote for a Republican. What has a Republican done for you? Everyone says, ‘Well, at least they’re not as bad as Democrats.’ Yes they are! They’re all bad!”
He continued: “Vote for an independent and please, God almighty, do not vote for Sarah Palin. Please dear God do not vote for Sarah Palin. She has not shown us anything. I know everyone’s very excited about her, she’s probably a very nice woman, but she is not the answer.”
That was it: the crowd began to jeer the right-wing host in earnest.
“You’re going to boo me off?” Walsh asked. “You’re going to boo me off because I’m talking about Sarah Palin? Then you’re the problem.”
“You’re a punk!” a man yelled.
“I’m a punk? Walsh asked. “Because I’m talking about Sarah Palin?”
“She’s more of a man than you are!” another protester cried out.
“Sir, you need to back off and let me have my time up here, okay?” Walsh fired back. “You’re the problem, sir. I’m a punk and you’re an old, senile fart, now back off. … I’m not sure why I can’t point out the fact that Sarah Palin is a Republican and is part of the system. She couldn’t even finish her time as Governor of Alaska! I know that’s because she was being attacked but she’s gonna be attacked ten-fold when she runs for office. I’m advocating that we put real independents in office.”
At that point in the speech, a man in a light blue shirt picked up a sign advocating Sam Adams beer and flipped it over revealing the word “infiltrator,” with an arrow pointing directly at Walsh.
“I’m not an infiltrator!” Walsh protested as the audience erupted into cheers. “I guarantee you, I’m more conservative than you are. I guarantee you, I’m more conservative than everyone in this audience — tune into my show sometime. Hold on, wait a second, because I’m insulting Sarah Palin that makes me an infiltrator? This is not the Sarah Palin movement, is it?”
The boos grew even louder.
“Okay, okay,” he said. “So, this is the Sarah Palin movement, then.”
The man who’d held the “infiltrator” sign took the mic and apologized to the crowd for leaving, then launched into a jarring rendition of “Kumbayah” as the radio host walked away.
Walsh, who is currently staging a run for mayor in Georgetown, Delaware, remarked on his YouTube page that “many, not all, became irate” at his comments about Palin, adding how sad he was “to watch a movement I support turn into a pitchfork and fire mob”.
The tea parties, originally formed by supporters of Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) as a fundraising mechanism during the 2008 campaigns, have since become popularly coopted by old-guard Republicans and neoconservatives who successfully organized the participants into a series of angry protests against the health reform laws.
While most tea parties have protested President Obama, health reform and issues brought to public attention by liberals during the Bush administration, the groups are not a cohesive political party and do not have any specific, stated goals.
In her speech to a tea party convention in February, Palin made numerous claims littered with inaccuracies and exaggerations apparently designed to further her political agenda. In spite of her efforts, just 40 percent of tea party participants say Palin is qualified to be President of the United States, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll. A full 47 percent believe her to be unqualified.
The former half-term Governor of Alaska placed fourth among Republican personalities in a recent CNN poll which asked participants whether they’d vote against President Obama when stacked next to a well-known conservative. The sampling found that President Obama is still by far the most popular federal politician, whereas Palin would lose a hypothetical 2012 match-up by a margin of 55-42.
Among the tea parties, which seem to protest taxes and government spending the most, a whopping 90 percent told CBS News in a recent poll that their taxes had either stayed the same or been increased by the Obama administration.
President Obama has actually lowered taxes for approximately 95 percent of working Americans, fulfilling with the stimulus package a promise he made during the campaign. The White House claims the average amount working families are seeing in their 2010 tax returns is up by 10 percent over 2009, largely thanks to the Recovery Act. President Obama also promised to allow President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy to expire at year’s end, though Democrats are divided on how to permit the cutoff while keeping savings offered to some lower-income Americans.
This video was published to YouTube by user Mattandcrank on April 15, 2010.
