"Organizers of Saturday's 'One Nation Working Together' rally at the Lincoln Memorial are proud of their diversity.  Before the event, they predicted it would be the 'most diverse march in history.'  It turned out they were right. Looking around the rally, there were Teamsters Local 311, Service Employees International Union Local 1199, Communications Workers of America Local 2336, American Federation of Teachers Local 1, United Auto Workers Amalgamated Local 171, Transport Workers Union Local 100, and representatives of many, many other unions.  That's a lot of diversity."

"There is a war beginning in the Democratic Party, and the president has lost control of his base. 

"The Democratic leadership in the House appears to have lost another kind of control, fleeing Washington without passing a federal budget or extending even part of the Bush-era tax cuts, which are due to expire on Jan. 1. Democrats hold a solid majority in the House. They have a hitherto-powerful speaker. And the decision to adjourn passed by only a single vote -- that of Nancy Pelosi, who saw 39 Democrats join the Republicans in dissenting.  

"The Democratic Party right now is showing signs of coming apart, under the pressure of the election and two years of an unpopular presidency. But it's not a split in two, with the left versus the establishment. It's more like a splintering, with left-leaning activists distancing themselves from the party's politicians and moderate politicians distancing themselves from Mr. Obama."

"It is a lawyers' adage: If you have the law on your side, argue the law; if you have the facts, argue the facts; if you have neither, pound the table. Forgive the Democrats for their current table-pounding.

"They cannot run on their record ...

"Unable to campaign retrospectively, Democrats also cannot campaign prospectively -- 'Elect us and get more broccoli!' Hence the table-pounding: The Tea Party is a death panel for America's happiness."

"The Service Employees International Union plans to send 25,000 rank-and-file workers on 500 buses to Washington this weekend to protest the tea party movement, Republicans and Fox News. If SEIU members had any sense, they'd be demonstrating at their own bosses' D.C. headquarters. It's the Big Labor Left, not the Tea Party Right, that is flushing rank-and-file union workers' hard-earned dues down the collective toilet in these hard times. ...

"SEIU leaders have shown a special talent for squandering their workers' dues. They poured $10 million down the drain in Arkansas on a failed bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln. They spent $10 million on a nasty lawsuit against a competing union in California. They've burned through union dues to transport SEIU radicals to bully bank execs and their families at their private homes and to bus workers to Arizona to protest crackdowns on illegal aliens, who depress the wages of law-abiding working-class Americans."

"What is the quietest spot in Washington, D.C.? The Rose Garden? The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Actually, it’s the Justice Department’s Voting Section.

"The unit that allegedly fights disenfranchisement lately has been caught dozing while at least nine states deliver absentee ballots too slowly to overseas GIs. Too many military votes thus may go uncounted in November.

"In yet another outrage, the Voting Section is static while the rolls of at least 16 states evidently list ineligible voters, including non-residents, disqualified felons, and — yes — dead people. Justice’s response? 'ZZZZZZzzzzzz……'

"Even worse, the Big Sleep at Justice seems totally deliberate."

"Obama's entire career has been built on overpromising. Now not only is he underdelivering, he is doing so in spectacularly woeful fashion, and his teleprompter-dependent rhetoric is leaving even his true believers cynical and uninterested in turning out one-more-time for another round of hype built on bitter charges against an evil overclass.

"The snake oil has been tried and it doesn't work. In fact, it makes things worse. Much worse. And the customers are angry."

"As for the argument that the Pledge doesn’t go far enough, that’s obviously true. But it’s also true that the Pledge is far, far more ambitious than the Contract with America was. 

"Moreover, the fact that it garners support from across the GOP caucus is a good sign, not a bad one, not least because it shows that the GOP can reach out to both the tea parties and independents. Obama and Pelosi’s alienation of independents is destroying the Democratic party right now. Why should the GOP emulate that strategy? 

"Conservatives shouldn’t look at the Pledge as the sum total of the Republican agenda. They should see it as the opening bid."

"The public is seldom told that 1 percent of taxpayers already pay 40 percent of the income taxes collected, while 40 percent of income earners are exempt from federal income tax — or that present entitlements like Medicare and Social Security are financially unsustainable. Instead, they hear more often that those who manage to make above $250,000 per year have obligations to the rest of us to give back about 60 percent of what they earn in higher health-care and income taxes — together with payroll and rising state income taxes, and along with increased capital-gains and inheritance taxes...

"What optimistic Americans used to call a rising tide that lifts all boats is now once again derided as trickle-down economics. In other words, a newly peasant-minded America is willing to become collectively poorer so that some will not become wealthier.

"The present economy suggests that it is surely getting its wish."

"Despite their years of expertise, some Beltway insiders of all varieties -- press, pundits, politicians and strategists -- some friends of mine -- only dimly understand the tea party phenomenon. Spontaneous in its formation and wide-ranging in its composition, the tea party upwelling is the first genuine grassroots movement in American politics in decades. 

"Strategists talk a lot about grassroots, but the dirty secret in modern politics is that the grassroots have generally been superfluous. What has mattered is message and money. This is true for Democrats and Republicans. No wonder then that many insiders were stunned and perplexed by authentic grassroots activists, hooting at them in town hall meetings, organizing caucuses to discuss constitutional principles, holding rallies and protests that weren't decreed by a leader or sanctioned by a hierarchy and descending on Washington by the hundreds of thousands. For the left, it must be particularly terrifying to see the same 21st-century technology and social networking that propelled Obama in 2008 -- and which they felt entitled to as their exclusive domain -- hijacked by opponents of the Obama agenda."

"Tea party voters have been incited to political action by the policies of the Obama administration and the Pelosi-Reid Congress. These include a heretofore unimaginable federal spending spree, a failed package of stimulus programs, a government takeover of our health-care system, and the Democrats' insistence on raising taxes, particularly on job creators, even though job creation is our country's greatest need. 

"Tea party voters are not only motivated by the effect these terrible policies are having on them -- they are worried about America's future. They fear that their children and grandchildren won't inherit the same country they inherited from their parents and grandparents. What they know with certainty is that future generations will be saddled with paying back the trillions in debt that the Obama administration and Congress are running up with so little positive result."