Tea Party defenders like to accuse Tea Party critics of focusing on a tiny minority of racist, crazy or potentially violent freaks, and ignoring the vast majority of sensible, respectful law abiding folk who just support smaller government. Why, just the other day, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal pointed to the Tea Party group that played by the rules and took over the Maine GOP's convention, to push lovely and constructive Tea Party ideas into the party's platform, as an example of the productive role the movement plays.
Of course, a day later I wrote about how many crackpot ideas they got into Maine's constitution. But hey, one person's crackpot ideas are another person's political brilliance. I get that.
Is vandalism likewise in the eye of the beholder? I'm not so sure.
Thanks to Think Progress, I learned Friday that their ideas weren't all that was crazy about the Maine Tea Partiers. The state GOP just apologized to Portland's King Middle School, because conventioneers – who gathered at the Expo, but used the middle school for caucusing – unbelievably, vandalized an eighth-grade classroom. Relying on reports in the Portland Press Herald, Think Progress describes what the Tea Party caucusers did to eighth-grade teacher Paul Clifford's class:
