I ask all of you... Before the 2008 elections do any of you remember Republicans going after Bush...

[Hippo_Tron]

7. They're all drastically oversimplifying a more complex phenomenon

The Tea Party may be for fiscal discipline (even if they don't understand why they're for it) and its members may have been for it under the Bush administration. But the fact of the matter is that when there's a Republican President, his administration is inherently going to pacify the right to the point that they don't take action in the numbers we've seen. Under Clinton you saw the rise of a bunch of right wing nutjobs after Waco. You didn't see them emerge after Ruby Ridge (which contrary to revisionist dating happened under Bush I) because as long as there's a Republican President the right will generally not rise up like that. The fact that the current President is black certainly helps fuel the Tea Party, though it's not just about race.

It's the same with the anti-war movement on the left. Obama has done a lot of things that piss off the core of the anti-war movement but they can't rally the kind of numbers they could under Bush, because there are others on the margins who don't see the threat under a Democratic President.