I’m not feeling very upbeat right now. Other than those of us who follow such issues, who else will notice?
I am not very good at predicting distant futures. That said..
I share your disillusionment, and if I may explain why:
Every tea partier, in order to be seen for the isolated moments they are visible, must take a day off work or exert some kind of self-financed effort to make his/her presence known. For many, this involves taking time away from a job they are justifiably fearful of losing. There comes a point where the effort required to protest the current path of developments is just too much of a burden to continue. So, as I see it, if the “movement” does not acquire more and more adherents, it will slowly die off from inertia. There is only so much effort that people with actual lives and actual families can be expected to exert. Especially when it appears not to be doing much; or even steeling the resolve of the Marxists in charge. And the more it attenuates, the people to whom it is addressed are heartened.
As I said, as economic conditions deteriorate for J6P, half or more will simply capitulate and beg for government cheese as the sacrifice of their freedoms seems like less and less of a bad deal, since without their own bailout, those freedoms diminish in perceived value. After all, your freedom to do what want, where you want, to travel, to pursue life and liberty wherever it may take you becomes fairly meaningless if you cannot feed nor house yourself & your family. Desperate people, and I predict that the numbers of these will relentlessly rise, will gladly sign away their freedoms out of pure survival.
And finally, a really greasy and evil-implication example has been set by the bank bailouts. “Where’s mine?”
There is of course an election approaching, but if the “where’s mine” element of our society increases in strength, no particular outcome is predictable. And significant damage may well be done by that point.