One classy sign from Glenn Beck's 9-12 event in D.C Saturday
Updated below
National Tea Party expectations….
We’re going to Washington to give them a piece of our minds(we have more to spare!). We are joining hundreds of thousands (maybe as many as 1,000,000) fellow patriots in DC. get in on the act now.
Number of attendees according to Michelle Malkin's extremist-right website……
Celebrating the 9/12 rallies; Turnout estimated at 2 million;
Number of actual D.C. Tea Party protesters this past Saturday from someone, unlike Michelle Malkin, who was actually present….
I went down to the protest on the mall today just to have a look. The crowd was actually pretty impressive. I didn't have a good vantage point of the whole crowd, but I would say there were easily tens of thousands, maybe upwards of 50 thousand. But I was amused to hear more than one person really inflate those numbers. I overheard a guy on his cell phone saying there were two million people there, and another woman say a million and a half.
Number of protesters according to the D.C. fire department…..
The DC Fire Department has issued an unofficial estimate of 60,000 to 70,000 people in attendance, which is smallish by big DC protest/event standards but definitely respectable.
What type of crowd was it?
Those are the 9-12 Tea Partiers gathered in the DC Armory. Take notice of the diversity of the crowd…..or lack thereof.
Here is the guy who organized the D.C. Tea Party (along with Glenn Beck). Dick Armey, the head of FreedomWorks,…….talking to the Tea Partiers..
A bit of the pageantry…..
An interview…..
What was the feel, the sense…..of the protesters?….
However, it was an angry group with a real sense of absolute entitlement. Something not focused on by many. This sense of entitlement that they deserve to be the dominant deciders and that it's being taken away.
A group of primarily white protesters with no central message of protest. A group of protesters, after months and months of promotion from Fox and Glenn Beck, totaling around 60,000. A group with no coherent complaint except that Democrats are in control of Washington. A mainly white group of poor political losers. Some with extremely-wingnutty ideas.
The 9-12 event promoted heavily by Beck and Fox, organized by Dick Armey and attended by a group of 60,000 incoherent protesters turned out to be….alas….only a pity party.
American conservatives must face reality. American voters have rejected Republican candidates the last two elections. Americans are living right now with the disastrous mess left over from 8 years of a GOP president, 6 of those years with a Republican Congress. The era of Ronald Reagan brand conservatism is over. Proven to be a terrible failure. Conservative policies have been tried….and they have failed miserably.
Instead of facing reality, accepting failure and voter rejection, conservatives have been circling the Wingnut Wagons to defend failure.
It has been pitiful to watch.
In my senior year of high school our football team beat a neighboring team by 52-6. Walking in to the locker room after the game, the visiting losers, upset about being trounced so badly, tried to start a fight with our team members.
The visiting want-to-fight players represent the American Tea Party conservatives today. Having their ass kicked in the election "games" has only made them madder, more defiant. Tea Partiers, no matter that their candidates and policies have been thoroughly rejected, still think they, and they alone, are entitled to have their viewpoints recognized and implemented. They alone, represent "real America." And so they continually pick fights.
America is changing. Tea Partiers don't want it to change….and so they held a pity party, sore-loser session in D.C. voicing their disapproval. America elected a black Democrat, installed a Latino woman to the Supreme Court and is currently working through a national health reform bill.
Tea Partiers have lost the political policy battle…and they want to fight about it.
Update: Must see teevee on the 9-12'ers….
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Reverend,
You can talk all you want about diversity. The only thing in common in the photos that you posted, are working class people that have been taught to work from day one. The people that you purport to defend, are by nature, not a large contributor to the tax base, but more of a recipient of social services. I, for one, am done supporting these people. I feel that a person's entitlements should be based 100% off of those little Social Security statements that we get in the mail. You know, the statements that seem to know every dollar that I have made since I was 15 years old, working for the family masonry company? If you haven't worked, you should be entitled to nothing. And, the less you've earned, the less you get. Period. We should only promote self-advancement and accomplishment. You can write your blog any way you so desire, but I tell you, this isn't going to be pretty when the bill comes due for universal medical care, and millions refuse to pay. I am not paying for Quintella's 5 illegitimate kids.
Were you at the Tea Party event in D.C., Rev ????
From your ill-formed opinions, I'm going to hazard a guess that you were not. You have no idea what you are talking about, not that it has ever stopped you before.
The "wingnutty" ideas presented at the event were – fiscal conservatism, liberty, and a Constitutional government. If that's a wingnut, I gladly assume the title.
Where did those "wingnuts" ever get such ideas ???? Maybe from those other "wingnuts" known as the Founding Fathers. Being an extremist yourself, you don't know real mainstream American ideas when they are right in front of you.
btw, that "extreme right wing" website by Malkin you linked to DEBUNKED the idea that there were 2 million people there. Maybe you should have actually read it before you condemned it.
I WAS at the Tea Party, and I estimate the crowd to be around 80,000-100,000. Granted, that's just an estimate. I could be pretty far off. It could have been even more. All I know is, that was the biggest crowd in which I've ever been a part.
I also hate to break it to you, but the political debate in this country is NOT over. Not by a longshot. You might wish that everyone would bend to your will and become obedient little comrades, but it is not going to happen, and calling people names isn't going to help your cause. Y'all will learn that lesson real soon.
America holds national elections every 2 years. That's how Americans run their government…through representatives.
Americans have chosen Democrats over Republicans in the last 2 cycles.
The Tea Partiers turned 9-12'ers represent the losing side of that equation. Instead of coming up with new policies…new ideas….to solve modern American problems, 9-12'ers want to take the country backwards, embracing the same old failed conservative policies for which the Republicans were tossed out of power.
The faux-movement calling itslf the 9-12'ers, or the Tea Partiers, or whatever, are simply protesting the fact that their candidates lost.
Conservatives are still in denial. 9-12'ers don't have any idea what they're even protesting about, and that's why the signs they carried were basically incoherent….they just know they don't like losing.
Get some new ideas and some new candidates.
Hmmmm, kind of reminds me of the million man march, or the half million man march, or the 10% of a million man march, well you get the idea.
I personally am for the concept of health care for all but on the other hand I agree with Pyroclastic Flow and think we should "promote self-advancement ". It is sort of like the abortion debate, that is being pro-choice but anti-abortion. I guess I'll figure it out someday.
As to whether or not this is a pity party as you say, or real outrage, we will know more at mid-term elections. Repugs v. demoncrats, now that is real choice.
Since the mainstream press has chosesn to ingnore the insignificant gathering of a few white malcontents it is good to know that I can count on the expert to fill in the blanks. Now I know how many people attended(not that is mattered), why they attended, and what rock they crawled out from under. Another masterful analysis by the Rev.
You're wrong, Rev. You don't know what the Tea Party rally was about, because you weren't there. You're simply regurgitating MSNBC talking points. Nice propaganda, but propaganda is all it is.
If you can't engage your independent brain cells enough to figure out what the Tea Party rallies are about when the country is $12 trillion in debt, with Obama on scale to add $9 trillion more, with government growing at an unprecedented rate, with all the big companies being bailed out as the little guys lose their jobs, with the government invading all sorts of private sectors that were previously out of bounds, with the Dems proposing a slew of anti-business legislation and tax increases in a depressed economy, with the government wanting to takeover health care, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc……..
Then I just feel sorry for you. You are facilitating the destruction of your own country.
I've been to religious revivals in my time, King. I know it must be difficult to separate the emotionally charged comradery you experienced with reality.
What America is going through has happened before when a GOP president left office. Republican leaders run up huge national deficits handcuffing incoming Democrats. They've done this my entire lifetime. Democrats believe in governance and so they'll eventually fix the GOP f-ups…but to take the conservative sore losers as a serious bunch….as a group that has credibility, is taking it too far.
The afterglow wll wear off and then you'll see things more clearly.
angry….the Washington Post covered the Teabaggers on it's front page. The anti-war rally of 2002……a much, much bigger event….was overed by the Post on page A-19.
The main media leans to the right….has for a long time.
The main media leans to the right….has for a long time. ????????
Now I know you've lost it. What is the main media? If you mean NBC, ABC,CBS and most of the east coast newspapers your way off base on that comment. If it is cable news it is pretty much 60/40 (left/right) by channels but 10/90 by ratings. I guess it is just how you want to look at things.
Rev lives in his own fantasy world, steve.
The only news trucks I saw at the D.C. Tea Party rally were Fox News and CNN.
Main media are for-profit operations. While some "journalists" may be progressive, though not many are, the corporations who hire them are not. Corporations whose stock is traded on Wall Street and whose CEO's play inflate-the-balloon for personal stock option purposes, desire lower taxes on the more affluent and a hands-off-their-business government. That is a conservative, Republican viewpoint.
The result of 20 years of Limbaugh and over 10 of Faux News is the demonization of the word liberal. Reporters and anchor-heads now fear being called liberal, or favoring liberal points of view….and so they go out of their way to give ample coverage, over-ample, to conservatives and Republicans. No matter how insanely crazy any of these wingnut slogans have become, that so-called liberal media has taken them seriously……all so they won't be accused of favoring those dreaded liberals.
If one cannot recognize this, one isn't paying very close attention.
Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, Hollywood actors, this blog, etc., etc., have done far more to demonize the word liberal than Fox News or Boss Limbaugh could ever dream of, Reverend.