It is pretty clear that the majority of the folks who showed up at the various tea-parties yesterday were from the lower end of the economic spectrum. It is the latest example of something I have alway found puzzling: How is it that the Republicans are able to excite supporters who, on any rational basis, will actually be harmed by most Republican policies? These supporters seem unable to recognize their own self-interest. To take one example, and a distressing one at that, take Joe the Plumber who professed to be scared of increasing the marginal rates on those making more than $250,000.  It would stun me to learn that “Joe” every made more than that in his life. Yet, he believed that he personally would be hurt by such a tax increase because someday, maybe, somehow he would have his own plumbing company. Insanity. Further, none of the teabaggers took to the streets while George Bush more than tripled the national debt invading a country that never attacked us or posed any significant threat.

Anyway, Matt Taibbi captures the essence of this situation in his latest post:

So yeah, government waste sucks, it’s rampant at every level, and taxes are a vicious racket, and everyone should be pissed off . What’s hilarious about the teabaggers, though, is how they never squawk about waste until the spending actually has a chance of benefiting them. You will never hear of a teabagger crying about OPIC giving $50 million in free insurance to some mining company so that they can dig for silver in rural Bolivia. You won’t hear of a teabagger protesting the $2.5 billion in Ex-Im loans we gave to GE through the early part of this decade, even as GE was moving nearly a hundred thousand jobs overseas over the course of ten years. And Michelle Malkin’s readers didn’t seem to mind giving IBM millions in Ex-IM and ATP loans at the same time it was giving its former CEO, Lou Gerstner, $260 million in stock options.

In other words teabaggers don’t mind paying taxes to fund the salaries of Bolivian miners, Lou Gerstner’s stock options, deliveries of “sailboat fuel,” the Hermes scarves on Sandy Weill’s jet pillows, or even the export of their own goddamn jobs. But they do hate it when someone tries to re-asphalt their roads, or help bail their slob neighbor out of foreclosure. And God forbid someone propose a health care program, or increased financial aid for college. Hell, that’s like offering to share your turkey with the other Pilgrims! That’s not what America is all about! America is every Pilgrim for himself, dammit! Raise your own motherfucking turkey!