After a month in France being French and doing nothing except eat and drink, it’s good to come back to America and to see that the tea-party spirit is still alive and kicking. In fact, I intend to go to my first tea party ever on September 12 in Washington, D.C., for a national taxpayers’ march to Capitol Hill (a French citizen demonstrating, imagine that!).

No doubt the media will cover it as evidence that these greedy marchers do not want to pay taxes. Sure, in my case, there is some of that. I am not ready to shoulder Obama’s inevitable new taxes. But that’s not it. Senator Coburn (R., Okla.) has a great op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on that point today. He writes:

I spoke with thousands of voters at town-hall meetings this summer. What I gathered from them is that it’s not just the proposed overhaul of health care that has them upset. Many also expressed a sense of betrayal. In spite of their hope for change, it still appears that the government in Washington is run for its own benefit and the benefit of special interests—not for the benefit of the American people. The folks I met with also don’t trust politicians in Washington to address mounting long-term challenges to our economy.
It’s not just the attendees of town-halls meetings in Oklahoma. Voters across the country are telling Washington what’s on their mind, if only more people inside the Beltway would listen. A Rasmussen poll released last month showed that 40% of voters said that cutting the deficit in half by 2012 should be President Barack Obama’s top priority. Only 21% said health-care reform should be his No. 1 priority.

But are lawmakers in Washington listening? Read the whole thing here.