Tea Parties

For classical liberals and legal conservatives, the very fact of the protest speaks to the degree of its seriousness.

Absolutely right. Your garden-variety Leftist has been raised to protest anything and everything. I remember endless protests at the University of Oregon, on subjects ranging from "Take Back the Night" to Graduate Teaching Assistants salaries, to Spotted Owls to starch levels in dorm food. The one thing I specifically remember is that there was NEVER a protest that could even be considered anything less than coming from some variant of the radical fringe left.

Conservatives just don't get out in the street and protest.

So, when they do, and they're respectful in the process, and they do so on short notice, with no central organization, you know it means something. What does it mean? It's too early to know, exactly. But the more the Drive-by-Media tries to ridicule the protestors ala CNN, or tries ad hominem smears ala Pelosi (who likened the protestors to Nazis) the more emboldened these folks it will get. Nobody thought Californians had the gumption to pass massive, landscape-changing property tax reform in the late 70's. But they did. And it changed the political landscape for the better for more than 20 years.