Will be very interesting to see how many people actually show up at these “tea parties” this week. Fox has been pimping it hard, and the impression it and the partisans on the right are trying to convey is that this is not only a populist movement (which it isn’t), but it’s a mass movement.

Turnout will tell.

Indeed, after all the pimping - Fox is raising the bar here. If this movement - if Fox News itself - is as consequential as they’d like us to believe, then these protests will attract thousands. I’m not talking one thousand - I’m talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, across the nation.

I’m saying that if our local protest here in the city of Lancaster attracts fewer than 5,000 - then it ain’t all that.

Now, maybe it will attract that many people. But the point here is that the right is trying to convince us that this movement is as legitimate (actually, they’d say more legitimate) than the anti-war movement of 2002 and early 2003. For that to be the case - they have to match those numbers.

On October 26, 2002, some 100,000 people attended an anti-war protest in Washington, D.C. Will the “tea party” protests match that in any one city? Will they match that in toto? They kind of need to.

Those anti-war protests weren’t being pimped the way Fox is pimping the teabaggery. Given Fox’s explicit support, given that Fox is the undisputed news source for the conservative movement proper, and given that movement conservatives still now try to claim that they represent a majority of America and Americans - Wednesday’s numbers shall tell the real tale. But, of course, they’ll claim victory regardless.