Opinion on 'Tea Parties' Split Down Party Lines

Tens of thousands set to attend nationwide demonstrations

(NEWSER) - Fiscal conservatives across the country will reenact Revolutionary history today with tea parties in every state to protest taxes and increased spending, ABC News reports. Tens of thousands are registered to attend in major cities, testing whether anti-Obama budget sentiment, which has picked up steam on the Internet, with help from Fox News, is “the beginning of conservative online grassroots politics,” says a Republican Internet strategist. More»

(NEWSER) - Want to get in on the fun and excitement of the anti-Obama Taxpayer Tea Party? Here’s how, writes Marc Cooper in the Los Angeles Times: “Go to a hobby store. Buy a scale model of a UN One-World-Government Black Helicopter and a tube of glue. Toss the model kit. Sniff the entire tube of glue. You’re all set for the party.” More»

Progressives have proved too ready to abandon Obama

(NEWSER) - Critics of Barack Obama are taking last week's confrontation by Velma Hart , a struggling middle-class black supporter, as proof that the president has lost even the support of African-American voters. Hart, who told Obama she was "still waiting for change" couldn't "have done a better job for the elephants if GOP head Michael Steele had written her statement," writes Stanley Crouch for the New York Daily News . The Hart encounter will provide fodder for attacking the president along racial lines, but it illustrates Obama's problem with liberals in general. More»

NY governor among few Dems to criticize move

(NEWSER) - New York Gov. David Paterson, already unpopular with the White House, tonight ripped the Obama administration for deciding to try five men implicated in the 9/11 terror attacks in New York City. "This is not a decision that I would have made,” Paterson said. “New York was very much the epicenter of that attack; over 2,700 lives were lost." More»

The real, centuries-old conflict is between urban elites and small towners

(NEWSER) - It's a mistake to see the growing backlash against President Obama through the prism of race, David Brooks writes in the New York Times. The anti-Obama movement springs not from racism, but from the long American tradition of popular distrust of the urban elite, argues Brooks. He notes mostly white anti-government protesters happily mingled with people from an African-American event in the capital last weekend. More»