Were The Tea Parties "Crashed" Yesterday?

I don't know if you were aware of it, but liberals across the nation were swearing they would "crash the tea parties." They intended to attend the rallies, PRETEND to be Tea Party supporters, and do objectionable things... hold up signs with misspelled words or racist/hateful messages, shout insults and racist epithets, and give interviews to news reporters expressing extreme racist and/or violent opinions and messages.

No, I swear... this was a real movement.
http://www.crashtheteaparty.org/

The site looks much different today than it has in recent weeks... indeed, it's mostly gone. But the movement urged infiltration of Tea Party rallies with the express purpose of misrepresenting the rallies to destroy their reputation.

So, how'd that go? Apparently, not all that well.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0410/35901.html

After several days of hype and hand-wringing about liberal plans to infiltrate Thursday’s tea party rallies, the great 2010 Tax Day Tea Party Crash did not produce much of a bang in Washington.

To be sure, a handful of obvious crashers engaged in some mostly non-confrontational back-and-forth with tea party activists at a Thursday evening rally that drew thousands to Washington’s National Mall near the Washington Monument. And some less overt crashers subtly mocked activists from amidst their ranks at both the evening rally on the Mall and an earlier event at Freedom Plaza near the White House. And there could have been other infiltrators who evaded immediate detection.

But activists and organizers interviewed by POLITICO said the mischief was nowhere near as widespread or disruptive as they feared earlier in the week, when a wave of attention focused on a website called CrashtheTeaParty.org that encouraged liberals to pretend to be tea partiers, attend rallies and voice fringe sentiments to marginalize the movement (the website appears to have been stripped of most of its content Thursday).

Now, this raises several questions in my mind. WHY did this effort fizzle? I can think of two major reasons.


First, it could mean they were unable to gather the numbers of people necessary to make the resistance effective. That would indicate that the momentum and force behind the Tea Party movement eclipses that of Obama supporters.

Second, it could mean that, after time for sober reflection, they realized how dishonest and despicable they would be if they had to resort to lies and fraudulent behavior to discredit a movement that seems to be gaining in size, passion, and popularity.

I hope, with all my heart, that the second reason applies here. Either way, the news is good for Tea Partiers, but the second reason is also good for opponents. It's not good to embrace that kind of behavior to achieve an end, no matter your intensity.