Yuval Levin explains why they’re implausible:

…no one around here, in either party and on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, has nearly the information, ability, or competence to pull off any kind of complex four-steps-ahead type maneuver, and the system works in a way that makes it pretty much impossible to seriously try. Most of the time, people are barely managing to keep their heads above water amidst the rush of events and to respond to the latest unexpected and ridiculous screwup.

I’ll always remember riding into work on the train day after day when I was a (very) junior staffer in Newt Gingrich’s Speaker’s Office in 1998 and reading in the paper about how the Republican leadership in Congress was setting traps for Bill Clinton and playing some ingenious chess game with the impeachment process, and then arriving at work and finding that no one had any idea how things had gotten where they had or what would happen next. It was much the same working in the White House: All the various conspiracy theories (good and bad) were utterly laughable. Governing is terribly complicated and the people doing it, while often very intelligent, could never hope to master anything close to the command of contingency necessary to carry off any kind of conspiracy. They often can’t even manage to meet their actual responsibilities adequately in the face of the indescribably intense entropy of government. (That’s, by the way, one more reason why they should not be given trillions of dollars to throw around).

This applies to space policy as well. And it’s particularly hard to get good policy in such an environment when it isn’t even perceived to be politically important. It also reminds me of a story that the late and deeply lamented Tom Rogers told me, from when he was working for the Johnson administration, and came to the realization that in Washington, no one is in charge, really. Some people have lofty titles, and big offices, and issue orders, and occasionally they’re followed, but mostly, as Yuval notes, it’s a highly entropic process, a sticky mess of friction and confusion. It’s the nature of a democracy, and please spare us from a strong man who will cut through it, because he’s likely to end up slicing vital things.

…has a Facebook page.

You know, maybe the American Tea Party is a third party that could actually get enough adherents to work…

[Update a few minutes later]

Of course, that was just an off-the-cuff comment, and it deserves a lot more thought. “Clarendon” has provided some:

I’m not objecting to the protests. Far from it in fact. I’ll be at the protest in Washington, D.C. But I am not expecting anything other than street theater, or the political equivalent of clearing our throat rather than the yelling our politicians deserve to hear. I won’t compare it to the Boston Tea Party, because there is no comparison. To claim otherwise is to both cheapen the actual protest by 200 Bostonians and their thousands of supporters, and to inflate the magnitude of our current actions.

I wonder, what are we expecting to achieve from these protests? Are we content to merely register our disapproval, or are we seeking to change what Congress and our president have done? If it is the former, I’m sure the politicians will note our objection, and wait for us to quiet down. If it is the latter, I fear our current protests are too scatter-shot to do any real good.

What is the target of our protest? Are we protesting the President and Congress for an act already passed, or are we petitioning our state and local governments to refuse to accept the stimulus money?

What do we do if these protests do not result in the change in policies we are asking for? What happens next?

Make no mistake, once a movement like this has begun, it will, sooner or later, have to answer these difficult questions or risk failure. Now is the seed-time of liberty, and the steps we take and the words we use will either be recalled triumphantly by our grandchildren, or seen as a sad charade conducted by children who could not muster the strength and conviction of their ancestors.

It’s a good question. But a strongly related one (though not one that the original tea partiers had thought through themselves) is “what does this movement stand for? What are its principles?”

It’s very easy to say that we’re opposed to the bailout(s), just as “we’re opposed to tyranny and taxation without representation, and a tax imposed on our favorite hot beverage with no recourse.” But to what else are we opposed? What are we for? Those are the issues on which third parties have foundered over the decades, even ignoring the institutional difficulties of starting one. It’s very easy to unite against something, because the enemy of my enemy is always my friend, but the devil lies in the details of determining what one stands for.

I’d like to think that this is a small-government movement, but I fear that people who are opposed to the bailout(s) aren’t really opposed to big government — they just don’t like what the big government has been doing lately.

[Late Pacific update]

Here’s more from PJ Media.

[Sunday morning update]

Has the revolt of the Kulaks begun?

[Another update later morning]

OK, I didn’t watch Schoolhouse Rock, but I think I get it anyway.

[Early afternoon update]

Per one of the commenters, yes, the Perot mania is exactly what I was thinking when I expressed the concerns above. That was a Seinfeld campaign — a campaign about nothing.

For those unused to having to do so. Apparently, we’ll have to fight Alinsky to Alinsky to save the country.