Republicans just love to dismiss the ongoing pro-labor protests in Wisconsin, accusing unions of busing in demonstrators from out of state. But they're gonna have a much harder time of it this Saturday at 12:00 noon, when thousands of farmers descend on the state Capitol in what is being billed as the Farm Labor Tractorcade.

According to the protest's Facebook page, over 3,500 people have already confirmed that they will be attending the event, and while I suppose they won't all be riding in on farm equipment, that's still shaping up to be a helluva lot of tractors rumbling in solidarity with state workers, and the rights of all Wisconsinites to bargain collectively.

Joel Greeno, a Kendall, Wisconsin dairy farmer, says he "thought it was time for farmers to have a voice in this debate."

[...] "80% of the nation's dairy farmers market their milk through co-ops and co-ops use collective bargaining rights to establish prices. An attack on workers collective bargaining rights is an attack on farmers' bargaining rights."

No, these aren't a bunch of commie-leftist-pinko union organizers we're talking about—though no doubt the Republicans will attempt to propagandize them as such—these are farmers... the middlest of middle-Americans... what Sarah Palin calls the real America. Before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his Tea Party minions attempt to brush off these protests too, they may want to brush up on their history. For while Republicans have come to take rural voters for granted as an immutable part of their base, these same communities were once an integral part of the Democrats' post-New Deal majority, not to mention the seedbed from which the American progressive movement first sprouted over a century ago. In other words, radicalize at your own risk.

So Republicans beware: if there's one thing Wisconsin's dairy farmers know about, it's manure. And they'll certainly find plenty of that in Madison.