On the whole matter of protests about taxation, I think I agree with Andrew Sullivan. Here's most of what he had to say. (The reference to "Reynolds" is to Glenn Reynolds, a popular Conservative blogmeister.)
…it seems odd to describe this as anything but a first stab at creating opposition to the Obama administration's spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush's. The tea-parties are as post-partisan as Reynolds, one of the most relentlessly partisan bloggers on the web. When you see them holding up effigies of Bush, who was, unlike Obama, supposed to be the fiscal conservative, let me know.
But the substantive critique must remain the primary one. Protesting government spending is meaningless unless you say what you'd cut.
If you favor no bailouts, then say so. If you want to see the banking system collapse, then say so. If you think the recession demands no fiscal stimulus, then say so. If you favor big cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, social security and defense, then say so. I keep waiting for Reynolds to tell us what these protests are for; and he can only spin what they are against.
All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.
One of the ten-or-so things that caused me to lose respect for John McCain was his repeated promise that he could slash zillions from the budget…but his refusal to say what would go. That attitude leads to only two possible conclusions, as I see it: That he had no idea where to cut…or did and knew that too much of the nation wouldn't like losing whatever he'd kill. Instead, he kept saying, "This is not a good time to raise taxes on anyone," as if he ever thought there was a good time for that. If that's what someone means when they say that, I wish they'd say that, too.