Wheat and Chaff

I think the Tea Party infiltration movement may have backfired badly.

For those not familiar with this movement, there has been attempts by leftists to infiltrate the Tea Parties and go to the rallies with racist signs, or truther signs or things like that in order to discredit the Tea Parties.  These efforts have, as far as I can see, failed.  Instapundit does a great job of cataloging these kinds of events.

What's interesting about this, though, is that when I went to my first Tea Party a year ago or so, I saw exactly one sign that I thought might be interpreted as borderline racist.  I thought it was unfortunate but didn't say anything.  But at the rally tomorrow, had I seen any such sign it was my intention to confront the person and try to drive them from the rally, at any rate to identify them, post their faces on the internet and make it clear that no such sentiment had any place with the rest of us.  As the link above showed, this appears to have been everyone else's reaction as well.

The Tea Parties have never been about racism.  They are about fiscal responsibility, government overreach and faithfulness to the constitution.  But of course there are always fringe elements.  There are always kooks that look at a movement like this as an opportunity to increase their tiny little megaphone.  By attempting to play up those fringe elements and make it appear as if those were the core of the Tea Party movement, the leftists will actually have the effect of guaranteeing that any racist signs at Tea Party rallies are promptly identified and disavowed.  And after the fact, we can just claim that they must have been infiltrators!