Let's use liberal math to calculate attendance at this week's nationwide Tax Day Tea Party protests. When left-wing activists make crowd estimates, the algorithm is: six figures = one million. An incomplete survey of newspaper accounts and organizer estimates pegged the Tea Party protest population at a minimum of 250,000. We can now, therefore, officially call it the Million Taxpayer March. 
Or the Million Right-Wing Extremists March if you work for the Department of Homeland Security.
To George Soros-funded grievance professionals, 250,000 is an insignificant number. But unlike recent anti-war and pro-illegal immigration rallies padded with union workers, college students and homeless people, the Tax Day Tea Party demonstrations featured small-business owners, working taxpayers and families. This wasn't a weekend or holiday, mind you. A quarter-million people took time off in the middle of the workweek to raise their voices against reckless taxing and bipartisan spending.
Multimillionaire jetsetter Nancy Pelosi scoffed that the Tax Day Tea Party movement was nothing more than "Astroturf" politics to protect the "wealthiest people" in America. Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky called the peaceable assemblies "despicable." Other bitter, clingy Tea Party-bashers grumbled that activists only showed up where Fox News cameras were. But tens of thousands more came out in rain, snow and cold -- in Bozeman, Mont.; Eau Claire, Wis.; Carson City, Nev.; White Plains, N.Y.; Bend, Ore.; Lansing, Mich.; Hilo, Hawaii; Nashville, Tenn.; and everywhere in between -- with no media personalities or celebrities in sight.
If only the condescending cable TV anchors at CNN and MSNBC had paused from wallowing in gutter puns about tea bags, they might have reported an even more significant phenomenon: Tea Party protesters were as vocal in their criticism of Republicans as they were of Democrats. In Salt Lake City, Utah, a crowd of 2,000 repeatedly booed GOP Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, who both supported the $700 billion TARP bailout, and protested GOP Gov. Jon Huntsman's decision to accept $1.6 billion in porky stimulus funds.
In Sacramento, Tea Party organizer Mark Meckler singled out California GOP Chair Ron Nehring for waffling on proposed $16 billion tax hikes. The crowd of 5,000 greeted Nehring -- who unsuccessfully tried to hitch his wagon to the Tea Party movement -- with a roar of boos and catcalls. Speaker after speaker lambasted Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for abandoning fiscal-conservative principles. The loudest chant of the day: "Throw them out."
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