From the Irvine Tea Party: It's Not Okay to F*ck Obama

"We're not an angry mob," Munzing explained to me. "We just want to get our message presented without vulgarity."

Today, one year after the tea party movement first caught headlines with their 2009 tax day protests, the sell-proclaimed patriots gathered again to show off their colonial garb, anti-big government sloganeering and, yes, occasionally inflammatory signs. The Irvine event brought big-name political candidates--Chuck DeVore for U.S. Senate, Steve Poizner for California Governor, Bill Hunt for Orange County Sheriff and John Eastman for California Attorney General--as well as a contingent of locals who overwhelmed what little public parking there was nearby. We're not going to estimate the crowd number, because, hell, we have no idea. Let's just say the Nissan lot was well-populated but not jam packed.

Speaking of Nissan, the general manager of the car dealership was hoisted on stage at one point to speak. I expected to hear a hearty pro-business, anti-taxes speech. What we instead got was a pitch: He was offering 8.75% off cars--one day only! "I'm ready to make some deals," he said, before being presented with a certificate of appreciation from Irvine city councilman and state assembly candidate Steven Choi.

Hunt and DeVore got the biggest responses from the audience. After they spoke, the crowd thinned quite a bit--much to the chagrin of the OC GOP Central Committee candidates who were up next, as well as Poizner who, for some reason, spoke apart from all the other major office candidates.

"We're just a bunch of people who grew up loving Leave it to Beaver," Munzing told me, which seems like a pretty good description of the tea party members. What they represent certainly isn't new. They're Nixon's silent majority, the shrinking demographic base of the Republican party, mostly white and mostly upper middle-class people who already made a habit of voting. What's new is their name and their energy. At one point, DeVore asked or the audience members who had been active in politics before last year to raise their hands. DeVore pointed out that it was about only about a third of the crowd. The other two-thirds is why this movement might matter--and we'll find out the extent to which that's the case during the June primaries.