Guardian: US Right Wired, Ready To Rumble

I mean rumble in a good way. Good heavens, it's the Guardian. I guess being overseas allows them to actually write a frank and fairly positive story about the 9/12 protests and what's beginning to happen across the board as far as Tech on our side. Check out their last graph for instance.

All of which makes Kibbe think that those Democrats who try to pigeonhole the tea parties as a crank phenomenon are playing into the anti-Obama movement's hands. "The Democrats who want to marginalise this movement are making a big mistake. They are insulting the people who they should be courting, and every time they do that our numbers seem to double in size."

They actually do a pretty good job of handling the whole thing. Pity American media doesn't seem up to it. That graph above might apply to them every bit as much as it does to the Democrats. Read the whole thing.

Republicans steal Barack Obama's internet campaigning tricksSince their election disaster, the right has used new media to gather strength, culminating in last weekend's huge protest

For Telford, though, dismissing the eruption as extremist or racist was to miss the point. For him, the 9/12 rally marked the moment at which conservative America finally embraced the new world and recovered its confidence. He believes the movement is now close to catching up with the Democrats in terms of internet savviness; in some ways he contends it has even surpassed them, particularly on Twitter, where much of the heavy lifting behind the so-called "tea parties" against Obama's tax and other policies is being done.

That cloud hung over the conservative movement for many weeks. A sense of crisis set in, he recalls, with bloggers, strategists and Republican politicians scrambling in different directions.

"There was a real lack of leadership, a lot of confusion."

But then, almost imperceptibly, something started to happen. Telford noticed Google groups popping up, listserves on which people would send angry emails back and forth. The anger was stimulated by Obama's $800bn stimulus package that was introduced five days into his presidency.

With very little leadership, the Google groups began to co-ordinate their response. People took on the onerous job of poring over the bill's hundreds of pages of small print in search of wasteful spending, following the Wikipedia model of crowd-sourcing.

They began to uncover items that looked suspicious or ridiculous: electric golf carts, snow machines, a crime museum in Las Vegas. They passed the examples on to mainstream media outlets, notably the new face of the right, snake-tongued Glenn Beck of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, who used it as ammunition to attack the young administration. The anger grew. When Americans for Prosperity put up its own petition against the bill on its website, it had 500,000 signatures within days.

"It was a huge wake-up call to all of us," Telford says. "On the right, people had known new media was important but they were still hesitant about it. After the stimulus experience, no one was left in any doubt about its power."

Less than eight months later, the seed planted in those anti-Obama Google groups has burst into flower on the streets of Washington. Tens – or even perhaps hundreds – of thousands of livid demonstrators filled the capital, brandishing banners saying "Don't tread on me!" and "Obamunism" – a reference to the president's perceived socialist or even communist tendencies. "Liar! Liar!"they shouted, echoing the outburst of a Republican congressman to Obama's face last week.

The noise of that startling crowd could be heard rumbling on throughout this week. Democrats rushed to dismiss the display of rightwing force as the work of mavericks and extremists. Jimmy Carter upped the ante by suggesting the vitriol was racist: many people in America, he said, believed a black man should not be president.

Comments

[jd]

Odd that the Obama administration has begun saying that they need to be able to control (shut down) the internet in "case of emergency". Maybe this uprising is the emergency???

[Peg C.]

Dan, this is a great piece - thanks! I'm sending to everyone. Man oh man some lefty Dems and state-run media types are going to be moaning when they see this.

I think the Right has just begun to fight, and note that it's happening without the GOP or even to the GOP's dismay. Right as we're all marching and rallying in D.C., BigGovernment starts blowing ACORN out of the water and now subversive anti-ACORN graffiti is popping up. A RedStater already has a devastating Michelle Ma Belle kale-shopping cartoon up today. This is getting fun.

[Ad rem]

List of women with two huge boobs:

1. Dolly Parton

2. Candy Samples

3. Lillian Carter

[DaveinPhoenix]

Wow ! This is so refreshing to read ! Kind of like when we get the real news from Pravda. Thanks. Maybe someday America will have real newspapers like The Guardian.

[x11b1p]

im going to twitter the hell out of this dan

[MarkJ]

Conservatives will know victory is in sight when Howard Dean screams: COWBELLS ARE RAAAAAACIST!!

http://www.cafepress.com/RichManAnon.408330212

[x11b1p]

i'd like to see the word racist only used as the R-Word!

[firefirefire]

A Black Man SHOULD be President.
Just not this black man who shares little of what black men who have achieved the American dream by study and hard work have achieved.
Look at what little we know about Barry Obama, He was elected to state office by having his opponents name removed from the ballot,after serving less than a full term in that office he ran for the next higher office with little or no successful acomplishment to his record(voting 'present' has that effect!)before running and winning the Presidency after a mere 148 days in the Senate.
He never ran a small,mid size or large business,was never responsible for the well being of employees,but he did write two books that made him a ton of dough.
We don't know what his grades in university or law school were, and we don't know much about him personally at all except what he related in his aformentioned tomes.
We do know that he was raised by a "typical white" grandmother who he promptly threw under the bus as soon as it suited his political needs, where she joined his spiritual mentor of 20 some years who had become a political liability.
Who is Barack Obama? is a question more Americans should have been asking before voting for him based on the fluff job the MSM gave Obama.
I guess by writting this, I'm a racist.
Oh well,,,

[Gary Ogletree]

This change was already in play when the McCain-Kennedy Shamnesty bill was defeated, when Clueless John was exposed for not knowing what was in his own bill.

[Barbara]

FFF,
SHOULD be? how about CAN be?
I agree with your overall point tho.
Talking to my Mother the other day who was simply steaming with all this racist nonsense being thrown about, told her don't fret Mums it is joke to many of us and we tease eachother that if you haven't been called racist in the last 24 hours you are slacking.
Did you catch the Madeline 1/2bright disgrace in Russia?
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024550.php

keep them talking......