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It seemed to me that the closer the Tea Party folks got to home, the more legitimate their beefs were. On the most basic, local level, their concern about waste and corruption seemed a good thing, a valuable revival of citizen concern after a long period of apathy. And the federal government does tend to impose layer upon layer of new regulations without keeping track of how they're working. The President says he's making an effort to review these impositions, but it certainly hasn't reached Texarkana. Indeed, I found myself in sympathy with much that the Miller County Patriots were saying until I asked them if Obama were a patriot. Then things went all crazy. One man called the President a socialist who wanted government to run everything, which meant he couldn't be a patriot. Smith said anyone who goes around the world apologizing for our country couldn't be a patriot. I asked if that applied to George W. Bush, who went to Africa and apologized for slavery. "I didn't like that, either," the mayor said.
Earlier, radio host Akin had told me, "Do we always say things in the right way? No. We've got to learn how to debate issues in a way that people will listen to us." That seems the heart of the matter: when they're talking about character loans, I'm all ears. When they're fantasizing about socialism, I'm not.