Where was the push-back on the Paul Ryan Georgetown speech?

I mean, I see the news van.  The protesters that would justify it?  Not so much.

(H/T Instapundit) Let me show you this picture: it’s from House Ways/Means [Budget**] chair Paul Ryan’s speech this morning (04/26/2012) at Georgetown. Specifically, it’s the protest at Georgetown:

Picture via John McCormack (via Twitchy): John is also noting that there weren’t many protesters inside, either, and that things went off without a hitch. Which is, of course, the way that these things should go; and I have no serious quibbles with the people who showed up with their signs and their long, hysterically demented, giant typewriter ribbon of protest and their pet news media van. They’re entitled to do it; and, hey, they showed up.

So where’s the rest of them?

Twitchy went into this point a bit, but let’s unpack it a bit more. The Democrats supposedly think (warning: FDL link) that Paul Ryan’s budget plan is a hideous liability for the Republicans – that is, those Democrats that actually know what the word ‘budget’ even means, which apparently excludes the entire Senate Democratic caucus* – so you would think that this speech by Ryan would and should have been a media circus. Watch the speech: in it Ryan went into how his own Catholic faith informs his fiscal conservatism (Georgetown, remember?), and how his current proposals are not in fact contrary to the Church’s principles when it comes to helping the poor. Given that this is genuinely subversive of the remaining links between American progressives and the Roman Catholic church hierarchy, it seems amazing that progressives weren’t trying their best to, well, at least show up.

Or did they?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: This is not 2007. We now know what a populist movement looks like; in late April 2010 the Tea Party was putting thousands in the streets in protests on a regular basis. I count… twelve?… in that above picture.

PS: Admittedly, the more people that showed up for a counter-protest, the more likely it would have been that said counter-protesters would have ended up acting badly. Heck, twelve was probably pushing it, at that. So there’s that.

*But don’t bring that up, or Debbie Wasserman Schultz will be mad at you. Note: not ‘get mad;’ there are days where DWS seems… frayed.

[**Arrgh!  I was deep in Ways & Means stuff this morning, and it carried over.  Thanks to @Jake_W for catching that.]