WHAT'S NEXT FOR 'TEA PARTY' MOVEMENT?

Fears that Wednesday's Tea Party protests would fizzle due to nagging suspicion that the 2008 election hangover may remain proved groundless, as more than 700 such gatherings attracted hundreds of thousands of people.

It takes all of about 10 seconds of scanning the thousands of Tea Party photographs and videos posted on the internet to see how utterly disconnected from reality claims are that the Tea Parties were mere staged insidiously choreographed by Rush Limbaugh and other conservative pundits.

The reality is that millions of Americans are DEEPLY worried about the unexpected and unprecedented direction the country is taking under Barack Obama and the Democratic congress led by Senate majority leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Americans thought they were electing a president who would seek "tax cuts" for 95% of all working families and a "net spending reduction" in the federal budget and a congress that got the message on earmarks.

Instead. Obama, Reid and Pelosi have adopted a $3.6 trillion spending plan that includes a $1.1 trillion deficit this year and thousands more earmarks.They are also preparing an energy plan sure to impose severe  new costs on all who pay a monthly utility bill, and they are on their way to the biggest expansion of bureaucracy and regulation since the Great Society.

We conservatives protest because we know these policies mean a future of economic stagnation, shortages, and rationing of essentials like health care, and a crushing public debt that will burden their children and grandchildren.

Obama, in less than 100 days, has become the most divisive president in modern American history.

So, what's next?    In my opinion we can't abandon what enabled this grass-roots phenomenon to grow in just a few weeks. We have to continue the social networking and bottom-up direction that was the root of this movement.Also, continue to protest locally. Today's local tremors eventually becomes an earthquake in Washington. Third, stop worrying about the liberal mainstream media.They can pretend that our movement doesn't matter or exist, but look how far we've come already, without their coverage.

The progress we've made in just a few weeks is astounding and indicative of how truly "dangerous" these liberal policies are.