WILL: What this was about, as was the original Boston Tea Party - which was barely about taxes but about Parliament's role in their lives, was a view that we're now in something called the "third wave" of government. You had the expansion of the New Deal, you had the expansion of the Great Society to complete the New Deal, what those people who rallied there were saying this is something different, this third wave is to erase the distinction between the public and private sectors, and that frightens them.

DONALDSON: Oh, they weren't saying that, George. What they were saying is, we don't like Obama. And this is a proxy way to say that. Because it's true, he's going to lower taxes on 95% of the American public, and the rest are going to have higher taxes. You were quite correct, it's not about the level of taxes. Those rallies were mainly, it seems to me, organized to say, "We don't like Obama" across the board.

Ironically, the very event at which Ryan mocked the idea of astroturfing was one of the many tea parties organized by Americans for Prosperity.

In addition to arranging for buses to bring people to the Madison tea party, Americans for Prosperity staff wrote press releases to publicize the event, coordinated logistics, and even distributed talking points. Matt Block, the Wisconsin state director for Americans for Prosperity, shared the stage with Ryan, delivering one of the keynote speeches.

As a tea party, what happened in Lafayette Square across from the White House yesterday was a washout.

There were no buttered scones, none of those dainty cucumber sandwiches and, as it happens, not a spot of tea. Organizers of the conservative protest were told at the last minute that they didn't have a permit to dump a million tea bags in the square, as they had planned.

Instead, they served up a rather noxious brew.

Although many in the crowd of around 2,000 in St. Paul said the event was the beginning of a more vocal anti-tax groundswell, detractors dismissed the gathering as little more than a rehash of resentments fanned by talk radio and TV pundits.
[...]
After Barb Davis White, a former congressional candidate spoke, a woman came up to her and gushed: "I pray for you and Michele Bachmann," a Republican congresswoman from Minnesota.

But tax day brought out defenders of taxes as well. At a noon news conference at the Capitol, one group, the Alliance For A Better Minnesota, announced an "It's Patriotic to Pay Fair Taxes" campaign. The purpose: to remind taxpayers of roads and teachers funded by their taxes.

Tea Party detractors said powerful national conservatives had tried to confer upon tax protests that often erupt at the filing deadline the kind of patriotic cachet of the Boston Tea Party, a pivotal event before the American Revolution. "It's [just] a different wrapper. It's the same bitter group," said John Van Hecke, executive director of Minnesota 2020, one of several self-described progressive groups that were dubious of the rallies.

This afternoon on MSNBC’s Hardball, host Mike Barnacle had Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) and Chicago tea party organizer John O’Hara on to discuss the tea party protests. Throughout their discussion, both Pence and O’Hara repeatedly claimed that today’s protests were nothing more than a “grassroots” movement that had finally reached a boiling point. It wasn’t until Barnacle pressed O’Hara on how he got involved with the protests that O’Hara explained that he worked for the right-wing think tank, the Heartland Institute.