Mr. TeaBag Goes To Washington
Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement had their big shindig in Washington D.C. yesterday. Reports vary, but the crowd size is estimated to have been a respectable 30-70,000. There were some claims by the organizers that it was as high as 1.5 million. These claims were of course repeated over and over by the right wing media. Some right wing sites are even posting false pictures of old unconnected events to prop up the idea that it was a larger crowd than it really was. When presented with government camera footage from the day, they incredibly claim that those are the “real fakes”. Of course, all of these inflated claims and bogus pictures are provably false, but facts will never convince some people.
70,000 people in one spot shouting one voice are nothing to sneeze at. But then you have to compare it to other historical events in the Capitol and around the country. The lowest estimate by the National Park Service for the Million Man March was 400,000. That was later revised to 850,000. The 1963 civil rights march on Washington gets reported with a wide range of between 200,000 and 500,000. Woodstock was 400,000 with hundreds of thousands more that couldn’t quite get there. Finally, the 2009 inaugural attendance topped out at 1.8 million. Knock off a couple of hundred thousand if you think that is on the high side and the number is still a record. The truth is, 70,000 people would not even fill up most professional football stadiums.
Much of the attention has focused on the many incendiary signs that were on display by the protesters and those have been well documented on other news sites. The Protesters have a right to their opinion but they do their party and their purpose no favors when the rhetoric gets out of control. Offensive signs in the hands of protesters have been around for decades, maybe even centuries. They belong to no specific political party exclusively. In fact, you can find a gallery of extremely offensive anti-Bush signs from the last eight years on this right wing site: http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=621 I know it’s ugly, but sometimes we have to be reminded that we were once the angry opposition.
The difference with the Anti-Obama movement is that even the most offensive and dangerous rhetoric has either been embraced by the Republican Party leaders or, at the very least, not denounced. The birthers, the deathers, the tenthers, the separatists and the secessionists have all received explicit or implicit support from sitting members of congress and other elected Republican leaders. This takes it out of the world of extremism and places it firmly in the lap of the mainstream Republican Party. Influential Congressman Mike Pence and Senator Jim DeMint speaking at the rally today is a perfect example. The Republican Party now owns the movement lock, stock and barrel and that will either be to their benefit or their doom.
The real questions remain. Will the Anti-Obama movement continue to grow and where will it take the Republican Party. Craig Shirley, a Republican strategist, said of the protesters “All they’re doing so far is anti-liberalism, which doesn’t necessarily have a political philosophy or an agenda of its own”. In other words, it is a movement of sound bites and not policies. So far, the movement has shown real passion but no depth. It is capable of getting out the protesters but not necessarily capable of getting out the vote. Protest movements make for good television and good press, but without a strong positive agenda like the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s they do not often create real change. For the Republicans who have hitched their wagon to this shooting star, they will undoubtedly be disappointed when it burns up in the atmosphere or disintegrates on impact.
