No bricks or racist in Searchlight protest

LA Times:

Thousands of conservative "tea party" protesters funneled onto a dusty plot in the Nevada desert on Saturday for a rally organizers hoped would convert frustration over the passage of a healthcare bill into the momentum needed to bring down the lawmakers who voted for it.

"God bless our revolution!" a Revolutionary War enactor cried out to a swarm of protesters, many waving American flags whipping in the cold wind.

The event, dubbed the "Showdown in Searchlight," was to focus specifically on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who lives a few miles from the site and is facing a dogged fight for reelection in November.

But the rally has taken on broader significance in a week marked not only by the passage of the sweeping changes but also by a rash of vandalism and threats of violence targeted at Democrats who supported the bill.

No tea party activist has been directly linked to any of the incidents. Still, leaders in the grass roots movement -- which has drawn attention for sometimes incendiary rhetoric and a tendency to attract fringe elements -- know their movement is under increased scrutiny. After reports of racial slurs dominated coverage of protests on Capitol Hill last weekend, similar incidents in Searchlight could damage the movement's image and hobble its influence.

"My guess is there is not a brick in the crowd," said Debbie Landis, the head of a Nevada group, Anger is Brewing, as she kicked off the event. "We're peaceful, we are off our couch and we are going to take our country back!"

Dan Weinland, a 59-year-old visiting California, drove with his nephew from Santa Clarita because "it's time to overthrow the socialist regime." At the ballot box, he clarified, but added "if they come for me I'm clinging to my guns, my God and my Bible and my country."

Joyce Bough, 64, of Bullhead City, Ariz., said she didn't believe the news reports that tea party activist had directed racial epithets at black lawmakers. "They don't have no true evidence of that," she said.

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The tea party movement sprung up early last year in opposition to the $700-billion bank bailout bill, which its tea partiers cast as a government takeover of the private sector. But it came into its own as a vehicle for some of the most ardent opposition to President Obama's healthcare reform efforts. Recent polls show the movement's ranks are overwhelming white, politically engaged, sympathetic to the Republican Party and dissatisfied with the direction of the country.

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This article is a much fairer report on the Tea Party movement that the prejudice displayed by Frank Rich of the NY Times or Colbert King of the Washington Post. The movement is about the spending and that is not a matter of race.