Columnist: Dems dismiss anti-tax fervor at their own peril

Salena Zito, who covers politics for The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, warns Democrats and their media allies that the disdain shown for hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans who took part in the Tea Parties could cost them in the future.

"Everybody complains about taxes and government spending, but nobody does anything about them," Zito writes in a new column. "Perhaps that's because whenever they do something, they're often labeled as racists, right-wing extremists or worse."

More from Zito's column:

Obama's campaign promised change and hope, yet so far, his presidency mostly has been about ramping up government programs and spending -- not necessarily the change people thought they would get.

"In short, I think people are just feeling disillusioned and duped by politicians who keep promising solutions and delivering more problems," says Lara Brown, a political scientist at Villanova University.

She thinks politicians and the media are behaving arrogantly by dismissing what is going on.

Zito adds this cautionary note for Barack Obama and the Democrats, who arrogantly assume they've amassed a permanent majority in Washington:

Our society moves forward only when it experiences setbacks; oddly, those setbacks ensure our perseverance. And the United States is a democracy that flourishes on free speech and the right to gather in protest.

Dismissals of today's anti-tax protests are a little like dismissals of Ross Perot when he ran for president in 1992: His anti-tax, anti-big-government message -- not Bill Clinton -- is what really beat George H.W. Bush.

Read the full column at the newspaper's Web site.