Ah, Democracy! Freedom of speech! Americans coming together to have their voices heard! You can just smell it in the air some days, can’t you? Or is that the smell of breakfast? It was probably hard to tell when, earlier this week, a couple hundred members of the SEIU stormed the barricades at Dunkin’ Donuts in a small town in Pennsylvania to protest in favor of raising the minimum wage and against… Mitt Romney?

About 200 union protesters descended on the parking lot of the Dunkin’ Donuts on High Street in Carlisle just before 12:30 p.m. today to call for increasing the federal minimum wage and to attack GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney…

Some of the protesters wearing Romney masks engaged in a pseudo counter-protest, based on what the union said is Romney’s opposition to increasing the federal minimum wage.

OK… I suppose I get that you want the minimum wage raised and believe Mitt doesn’t support your position. Fine. But… Dunkin’ Donuts? Is it because they sell those things that Mitt Romney really likes? You know, those… um… you know… treats?

The members of Service Employees International Union picked Dunkin’ Donuts because the chain is partially owned by Bain Capital, the private equity firm that Romney used to head.

Ah! It’s all coming clear now. Obviously Dunkin’ Donuts is part of Romney’s maximum double secret probation, shadow world government, so you’ll go stick it to The Man in their parking lot. But there’s one little problem with this plan. (OK… there’s a lot of problems with this plan, but this is the first one that leaps to mind.) Bain (along with a partnership including The Carlyle Group and Thomas H. Lee Partners) didn’t purchase Dunkin’ until 2006, long after Mitt was out the door by anyone’s standards of when he left.

Here’s the bonus part of the story… even if Romney had still somehow been involved, Bain and friends purchased Dunkin’ Donuts from its previous French owners, Pernod Ricard. This shifted the flow of the successful breakfast chain’s profits (and the taxes paid on them) back to the good old U.S of A rather than going overseas to France.

But, hey… if you can get 200 people from a small town to show up in the rain, if nothing else that must mean there’s a pretty big grassroots movement against Romney, right? I mean, that’s a pretty big turnout given the size of the town.

Kim Klinger, a nurse from Wilkes-Barre, said the SEIU members were from all over Pennsylvania and were attending a state-wide leadership conference at the Hotel Carlisle Embers Convention Center in Middlesex Twp. Five buses brought the union members from the conference to the Dunkin’ Donuts.

Busing in people to set up a “popular protest?” Where have I heard this story before? Man, you SEIU protesters can really build a narrative, eh? But if nothing else, I’m sure you kept the protest and political discourse elevated and professional, right? As always, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Stay classy, guys. Stay classy.