The message delivered at today’s tea party protest of the Detroit Auto Show: protecting American jobs beats telling Democrats to “keep their hands off” the economy.
A group of Michigan tea partiers successfully shut down a protest of the Detroit Auto Show arranged by the National Tax Payer’s Union today on the grounds that it was more important to protect American jobs than it was to condemn the government bailout of the auto industry. The AP was on the scene at the protest and found just two tea partiers in attendance. That’s despite a national call for a rally at the show by the National Tax Day Tea Party last week.
The organizers of the rally hoped to place hundreds of angry tea partiers in the face of White House officials and prominent Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, who visited the show today. Instead, they ran into an online campaign to shut down the protest from Michigan tea partiers who called it an affront to the thousands of Michiganders who rely on the auto industry for a paycheck.
To try and shut down a convention for the main industry of the state with the highest unemployment shows there is a serious lack of brain power in the tea party. It reminds me of when Republicans were saying “just let the auto industry die” with no plans on how to reemploy the approximately 14 million Americans that would lose their job (or 10% of the U.S. work force).