“The attitude we’re facing right now is very hostile,” Tea Party Patriot national organizer Jenny Beth Martin said… “The [members] don’t even want to hear from us on these issues.”[...]“There are no other rabbits to pull out of the hat,” Bachmann said. “This is the only thing I can think to do.”
[...](S)ome on the calls warned protesters to expect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to bring the full force of her office to stop them. Organizers spoke of rumors that Pelosi had ordered Capitol Police to force protester buses to park far away from the Capitol and told police to deny them the chance to deliver letters based on trumped up fears of “anthrax.”
At one point, protestors were told not to dress “too nicely” for fear the media would characterize them as a “Brooks Brothers riot,” after the astroturfed RNC protests that shut down the election recount in 2000.
“The SEIU guys will do their best to send people in suits in there to make it look like we’re spray-painting the Capitol or something,” one national organizer said.
Bachmann didn’t confirm the protesters’ fears, but she didn’t do much to alleviate them either. “Don’t bring your pitchforks — bring your video cameras,” she said to organizers. “That will absolutely scare your Representatives so much it will kill the bill.”
Bachmann called tomorrow’s protest a “desperate act,” but one that grew from a fear among the public of what might happen if the Democratic health reforms come to pass. “There’s no organization here,” she told the callers. “It’s a total organic act.” (Emphasis mine)
The last bit is funny, since Bachmann has “organized” this whole thing herself. The rest is a standard mix of fearmongering identity politics: “real” Americans bravely face the power of the state and throw themselves in the way of Teh Obamanon™ in an act of self-sacrificing patriotism. Which puts me in mind of what I wrote back in February about these culture warriors:
Kulturkampf is both means and end to the Culture Warriors. It is no coincidence that their target demographic has bought 60,000,000 copies of the apocalyptic Left Behind series: this is their political End Times. The stakes cannot be higher. What we’re seeing right now is a classic Last Stand,
a loose military term used to describe a body of troops holding a defensive position in the face of overwhelming odds. The defensive force usually takes very heavy casualties or is completely destroyed, while also inflicting high casualties on the opponent. Except in rare exceptions, such as Rorke’s Drift and the Battle of Longewala, the defending force is usually annihilated. (Emphasis mine)Leaders invariably tout these suicidal battles as ‘the last hope.’ In the last stand of an authoritarian regime (Hitler’s Berlin being the obvious, though clichéd, example) the defending force is exhorted to believe victory is still possible, that the enemy can still be beaten. Indeed, Republican opposition to the stimulus bill represents exactly this sort of thinking.
But last stands usually fail. If they are truly dedicated, the survivors turn to guerilla warfare. Representative Pete Sessions, R-Tx, exemplified this last week when he favorably compared Republican opposition to the Taliban insurgency. This is what ‘legacy projects’ and think tanks are for: they are the madrassahs of future insurgency.
Unless Obama takes the stimulus package experience as a lesson in what the Republicans will do to his agenda — and gives up on the pipedream of ‘bipartisanship’ with a party interested only in obstruction — the organs of Republican orthodoxy will create their own version of history. Just as the Lost Cause mythology of the Confederacy eventually culminated in the GOP’s Southern Strategy, the Republicans will raise a new generation of recruits to continue the Kulturkampf.
That is exactly what Bachmann and company are doing today. However their “last stand” plays out in the news cycle, it will inevitably return many cycles later in the narrative of Lost Cause mythology.
Meanwhile, Bachmann’s media aide is leaving for less crazy pastures. Politico:
A conservative Republican House member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, suggested that Bachmann’s views — and her willingness to state them — make it hard for her to keep staff.“When your captain’s crazy, it’s time to find a new ship,” the lawmaker said. (Emphasis mine)
That “crazy captain” is trying to lead the news cycle today.
