Liberals and conservatives both held tax day demonstrations in Montpelier yesterday, leaving observers to wonder which of them was more ineffectual.

At first, glance, the liberals would seem to have “won” this negative distinction hands down. Their demonstration was smaller. Only about 35 or so members and supporters of Save Our State showed up at the State Street tax office at 10 am to display their “SOS-EZ” forms indicating they were willing to pay more taxes to stave off deep cuts to social programs.

The conservatives drew 200 to 250 to the front lawn of the Capitol at noon,  and  though it wasn’t clear how many were supporters and how many were just curious, that was still a surprisingly good turnout for a conservative cause in a liberal town.

Mere crowd comparison, though,  might be misleading. The SOSers were organized via a short, low-budget, email and telephone effort which aimed at attracting only enough demonstrators to fill a small space (and look crowded on television).

The conservative event was part of a nationwide anti-tax “tea party” demonstration organized with contributions from several large corporations, promotion by talk radio stations and the active support of Fox News Network, which dropped whatever pretense remained of its “we report, you decide” slogan to beat the drums for the event.

Small in numbers, the liberals knew enough to be concise and focused. They had one message – a small tax increase is better than big budget cuts. They sent the message and they were gone within half an hour.

The conservatives, on the other hand, went on for almost two hours, with speakers (some in Montpelier, some remote from other “Tea Party” sites) opining about  immigration, Social Security, foreign policy, and “the abusive monetary policy of the Federal Reserve,” not otherwise explained. They did keep coming back to the tax issue, but they seemed a bit confused about what was going on. One speaker after another associated President Barack Obama with higher taxes. He just got Congress to cut taxes

Confusion also seemed to reign when it came to political assessment, with one speaker after another insisting that their anti-government, anti-tax, anti-Obama outlook was the opinion of what several of them called “the silent majority.” All the polls, though, show that not only is Obama popular, but so are his economic policies. Even taxes don’t seem to be held in all that much distaste. The latest Gallup Poll indicated that “48% of Americans (said) the amount of federal income taxes they pay is ‘about right,’ with 46% saying ‘too high’ — one of the most positive assessments Gallup has measured since 1956,” in the words of Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire.

And when T. J. Michaels, the talk show host of  Barre radio station WSNO, shouted “shame on” Senators Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, it sounded as though Michaels was convinced all three office-holders were out of touch with Vermonters and ripe for defeat.

They are, of course, about as close to unbeatable as office-holders can be.

It wasn’t that no one made sense at the protest. One supporter held aloft a sign reading, “The trouble with socialism is eventually you run out of other peoples money.”

Quite possibly true, though perhaps no truer than that one trouble with capitalism is that you never run out of other people’s money, at least not if you’re a big bank.

Still, the lack of focus and of political reality raises again the possibility that conservatives are just no good at demonstrations. They’re good at political fund-raising, strategizing, marketing and (until lately) winning. Not that long ago, they were also tolerably good at governing. But they’ve never seemed comfortable demonstrating. Fringe leftists are comfortable demonstrating, even when they’re making fools of themselves. Fringe right-wingers are not, though this discomfort does not appear to be caused by any greater awareness that they are making fools of themselves.

As with protest demonstrations, so it is with protest songs — the left is good at them; the right is not. Pete Seeger has made his political blunders (naiveté about Joe Stalin was not a minor error) but, by gum, he can play the banjo, sing, and get folks to sing along with him. Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Arlo Guthrie have talent, or perhaps genius. So does Bruce Springsteen.

But you should have heard that music playing at the Montpelier event yesterday. No, scratch that; be grateful you missed it. At least as heard on You-Tube, the quasi-official nationwide “Tea Party” theme by Lloyd Marcus wasn’t much better.

Only Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” and “Fightin’ Side of Me” rank as great conservative protest music. But they were a long time ago, and their conservatism was more cultural than political. If Haggard was a political conservative then, he isn’t any more. He endorse Hillary Clinton, and then Obama, last year.

The real problem with the Montpelier “Tea Party” though was not the music; it was the words, and their near-total lack of political coherence. Simply consider that speaker after speaker warned of “inflation.”

During the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression? The very day the government announced that inflation had declined by more than at any time in 54 years? Deflation is the threat. Right now, worrying about inflation is not real.

It isn’t that there’s no argument to be made against Obama’s policies. There are always arguments to be made against policy. But arguments not grounded in reality are not arguments; they are performances. Both of yesterday’s demonstrations were performances, of course; that’s what demonstrations are. But only one of them contained an argument. Anyone can disagree with that argument, but that’s because anyone can comprehend it. The performance in front of the Statehouse was incomprehensible.

In general, this is not a healthy situation. Without coherent opposition, a party and a political faction don’t have to think. Intellectual ossification then looms. No one should doubt that this can happen to the Democrats and to liberalism. It happened before, circa 1967. Recovery took awhile.

Vermonters are somewhat insulated from this danger because the only conservative here with any political influence, Gov. Douglas, is not of the “Tea Party” mentality. He says only nice things about the President, does not succumb to conspiracy theories, and understands that government is necessary.

He does, it is true, want to cut taxes, or at least not raise them.

So he says, anyway. Whether his policies would actually turn out that way requires more examination

Tags: Demonstrations, Tea Party

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 12:15 am and is filed under Arts & Culture, Business & Economy, Politics & Elections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.