I'm a big, big fan of this Tea Party thing. In this age where economic concerns easily trump social issues like abortion and gay marriage, it's a perfect time to forge a new coalition of libertarians, fiscal conservatives, and Democrats who understand that our wealth comes from business, not big government, and that strangling business and overtaxing consumers will not lead to prosperous future.

Anyway, I had a little friendly debate with some other folks who are fans of the movement over how it should present itself. We never really came to agreement, but the crux of the issue was a poster from the Atlanta Tea Party that had Obama in a Russian military uniform. I said comparing Obama to Stalin is off-point and will hurt recruitment of more folks to the cause, whereas they thought it was a perfectly reasonable sign for the context and that people at the Tea Party understood it was a comparison involving socialism, not Stalin's mass murdering of millions of people. I see their point, but I call it preaching to the choir. Yes, the people there may have gotten, but the people watching on TV that might come to the next protest may not have gotten the message, and just like Bush/Hitler comparisons made legitimate opponents of Bush look like fringe wackos, I think Obama/Stalin comparisons will hurt the cause. I find it hard to separate Stalin the communist from Stalin the mass murdered, so when I see a comparison to him, I think of both of those things.

An analogy would be a Bush-hater having a sign comparing Bush to Hitler and saying the comparison is not that Bush is a mass murderer like Hitler, but that they both spend tax dollars to make the trains run on time. Somehow I don't think that's gonna fly.