SO TODAY IS BEING CALLED THE TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE TEA PARTY. The ramp-up was more a process than an event, beginning a couple of weeks earlier. But here’s a post from two years ago exactly. Here’s one from Feb. 21st, and here’s another, plus an Insta-Poll. Here’s a post from Denver on Feb. 17, and here are pics from Seattle on Feb. 16. Plus, getting in Obama’s face in Mesa, Arizona that weekend.

Plus, my early look at the movement from April 15, 2009. And give InstaPundit reader Donald Gately credit for prescience. On December 27, 2008 he wrote:

You say that A.N.S.W.E.R. would love to see Icelandic-type protests here. But what if folks under 30 or 40 or 50 started staging large public protests about the Ponzi-scheme that is Social Security? What if taxpayers started staging massive protests about public pensions that let government employees (many of whom don’t have to participate in Social Security) retire at 50 with 90% pay – even while common taxpayers have to ratchet back their own retirement dates? What if financial and real-estate workers started staging protests about their jobs disappearing while the Democrats in congress do everything in their power to preserve cushy UAW deals? What if parents in neighborhoods with failing schools started actively protesting the stranglehold that the teachers unions have over their childrens’ education?

Those types of protests would likely un-nerve the left, and might actually lead to Change that the rest of us can believe in.

Pretty much how it’s worked out. . . .

UPDATE: A reader points out the importance of the March 15 Cincinnati Tea Party. Yeah, I think that overhead shot of the crowd by Russell Sayre actually did a lot to convince people that these events were getting big.