1 -- A message solely consisting of hatred towards Obama, or…

2 -- Overt racism, or…

3 -- Absolutely zero knowledge of what is ACTUALLY in the Constitution, or…

4 - Absolutely zero knowledge of what Socialism/Marxism/Communism/Fascism are about, or…

5 - Absolutely zero knowledge of what is in any of the versions of the Health Care legislation, or…

6 - FOX-provided talking points with no basis in reality (ie. the “Czarist Conspiracy” nonsense).

There is a good reason why the GOP doesn’t want to allow people to know what is really going on at these protests…they know it is going to cost them politically.  Increasingly, GOP insiders, advisors, and analysts are warning that the subsequent loss of votes among more moderate groups of citizens, are going to cost them a lot of elections.

Ironically, the White House seems to be doing the Republicans a favor, while conservative media and some Republicans are the ones promoting the extremism, and thereby harming their own party’s interests.  Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went on record as saying that the president does not believe the protests are racially motivated, and senior White House advisor David Axlerod would respond to the protesters only as far as to say, “They’re wrong.“  Both of these reactions, again, ironically coming from Democrats, would lend people to believe that these protests somehow represent the real “concerns of the people, although perhaps misguided.“  Meanwhile, both FOX News and some Republicans (several even spoke at the rally, including Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Mike Pence (R-IN), Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Tom Price (R-GA)) are openly supporting the fringe element’s language, tone, and conspiracy theories…forging a self-destructive alliance that in the end will, most likely, be very politically damaging.

It will be damaging because…the American people are mostly mainstream, moderate people, who see the protest (and others like it) for what it is:  around 70,000 people, with nothing better to do, holding ugly signs with misspelled words, shouting ugly things.

FreedomWorks, the corporate-funded, fake grassroots organizer pimping the event for FOX…tries to tell us it was around 700,000 people.  Right-wing blowhard Michelle Malkin set the number at 2 million.  Glenn Beck cited a number of 1.7 million based on a University…that he couldn’t remember: “We had a university, I think it’s University of — I don’t remember which university it is — um, look at the pictures. And you know, they can do body space and calculate, 1.7 million, that crowd was estimated.”

The picture the Tea Party group issued to back its ridiculous attendance claims?  Here it is:

Too bad…it’s a fake:  it’s missing the National Museum of the American Indian which opened in 2004, so it certainly wasn’t taken last Saturday.  What they don’t understand is…we already knew it was a fake.  Every moderate, intelligent, reasonable person KNOWS that 1.7 million people weren’t there…and we know why the 70,000 people were there, and we don’t want anything to do with them.

I can’t say it any simpler than this: the reason why this is a VERY bad strategy, starts with the fact that most educated moderates, do not want to be in any way associated with this person:

Most conservative Democrats…would never be a part of a group that carried these mass-produced signs, carried by MANY of the protesters:

Independents…do not want to be affiliated with this guy:

African-Americans, Latino-Americans, and members of other minorities…will never ally with these protesters who are taking pictures of a photo of Obama they have placed under a pile of horse manure:

The truly “Nice People” this protester’s sign refers to…would find the “We came unarmed…this time” threat of gun violence TOTALLY unacceptable:

Anyone who actually paid attention in school would find the ignorance of these two signs sadly comical:  one man apparently has no knowledge of Marxism, and the other is too stupid to know that there weren’t ANY czars in the USSR…and that there aren’t really any in the US, for that matter:

The “multi-layered ignorance” of this sign (and the hat, and the t-shirt) would turn away anyone with even the slightest intelligence, or sense of religious tolerance:

Now, I have certainly only showed a very small selection of signs, and some would accuse me of cherry-picking.  No: watch the video clips popping up all over the internet, and you will see HUNDREDS of signs comparing Obama to Hitler…HUNDREDS of flyers bearing the picture of Obama as a witch doctor with a bone through his nose…HUNDREDS of signs proclaiming Obama to be a communist…or a racist…or a Muslim.  The clips show a crowd that hates Obama, loves Glenn Beck, and thinks that Senator Joe Wilson, despite being both unprofessional and WRONG…is a hero:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1Ntu7Aapys

The NBC News covered the protest, and their clips featured a woman who stated, “We are losing our country, we think the Muslims are moving in and taking over.“  And why shouldn’t she think that…when the leadership of the Tea Party movement is NO SANER than she is:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fymdNxn82M

Do you hear that sound, Republicans?  That is the sound of millions of normal, calm, thoughtful people WALKING AWAY from you and the guy calling the president an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug.“  Millions more walk away when they see GOP supporters mindlessly parroting every inane thing that Glenn Beck says:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hH3rIamUn0

The GOP needs to start seeing this…the same way that THE REST OF US are seeing this.  Until they do, more and more moderates will be walking away…many of them laughing: