The first round of protests against the Obama administration’s chaotic and rapid-fire expansion of government came in the form of grass-roots “tea parties,” which were predictably met with scorn by the Democrat-Media Complex (the natural coalition of the Democratic Party and the mainstream media.)

CNN’s Anderson Cooper and MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow led the charge, declaring concerned Americans “tea baggers,” an allusion to an absurd sexual fetish beneath describing in a family newspaper. This attack on hundreds of thousands of people practicing their constitutional right to protest speaks volumes not just about the hardened sociopolitical leanings of America’s journalistic elite, but about the brazenness with which they are now wielding their unprofessionalism.

Last week on the grounds of the once-venerated White House, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, taking his cues from his allies in the media, referred to last week’s health care town-hall protesters as “tea baggers.”

How far we have fallen.

Stepping up the rhetoric from mockery to pure hatred, and absent any evidence, Mr. Olbermann has called the president’s public protesters “worse than racists.” Political activist and comedian Janeane Garofalo colored them “racist rednecks who hate blacks.” And at the somewhat higher end of the food chain, liberal economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times wrote last week that they were motivated by “cultural and racial fear.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is having a hard time these days explaining the president’s Israel policy to her Jewish constituents, blatantly lied and said that the protesters were wielding “swastikas and symbols like that.”

Supporters of the president understand what is going on. So do his detractors.

The mainstream media and the Democratic Party are working in concert to make sure that what happened to President Bush — sustained organized grass-roots protests (“mobs,” if you will), relentless media criticism and permanent opposition-party obstructionism — does not happen to their guy. Complicating matters, the media’s fate is directly tied to the president’s. Without them, Barack Obama would still be a backbencher from Illinois.

But the mockery. The recklessness. Unsupportable libel isn’t working. The tea parties and, now, the health care protests at town-hall meetings have only gotten bigger and stronger. The anti-big-government movement is pure. Its participants represent something close to what used to be considered normative in this country.

You can read the column in full here.