Protestors rally against high taxes and expanding government
Organizers, attendees and conservative viewers alike were elated with the success of yesterdays protest march in Washington DC. By the morning of September 12th, they had over 10,000 protesters confirm their planned participation, but were cautious throughout the day citing an expected turnout of “tens of thousands.”
Adam Brandon, a spokesman for one of the organizing groups, FreedomWorks, told Politico.com that he expected the crowd to be in the range of 20,000-30,000, but not anywhere near the “planted” figure of two million.
The “Tea Party” grew in size to mass proportions early in the day with speakers from political leaders to proudly patriotic Americans. Most attendees more than likely have never attended a protest before, that's something that conservatism supports, but until the need arises are busy taking part in freedom.
A short time-lapse of the crowed heading toward the Capitol
From what the time-lapse video shows, observers can see that the number of protesters is inconsequential as turn out was substantial. Coming from a group of conservatives, whose very nature makes protesting less than preferential, the resulting turnout was more than expected.
The protest sends a clear message to lawmakers that the owners of the United States, the American people, are now paying attention, reviewing legislation, counting how much money of the voter's money they are spending and what the legislators are spending it on.
During the protest many speakers delineated shared beliefs about un-sustainability of the current system and stuck with the key element that they are not entirely anti-Obama, anti-Democrat or anti-government. Attendees and speakers voiced concern with wildly irresponsible spending by, and unrestricted growth of what is increasingly being seen as big-government.
The crowd was made up of Republicans, Independents and Democrats and not only from across the political spectrum, but young and old – black and white – male and female. The protesters expressed their distrust in unaccountable lawmakers who now regularly pass bills in the middle of the night. Bills that are created by special interest organizations residing outside of the government. Bills passed without sufficient time for legislators to read or analyze the spending mandates of unparalleled size.
Even though Local police agencies estimated around 1.2 million in attendance, many detractors wish to diffuse the impact of such a large turnout that presented a loud and clear message of “hands off,” from the American people. Individuals angered with the march's success have claimed online that the number of attendees ranged from “a couple hundred to maybe a couple thousand,” while some expressed that the protest fell short of its “opposition created,” 2 million attendee expectation.
In a memo to fellow Democrats a top aide to Nancy Pelosi warned that up to 2 million people could potentially attend. The memo was most surely created for the intended purpose of being leaked; utilizing a time-tested political tactic, utilizing a groups own inertia against itself. The idea being to suggest and encourage belief in unrealistic expectations, and when those expectations are not met media sources and participants alike will claim failure of the movement.
The left blogosphere has, in mass, seized upon the figure to demean event attendance, but falls well short in it's understanding of the events success. The goals envisioned by protest organizers were two-fold; express to the lawmakers that we are here and watching, and affirm to themselves that they are a power to be reckoned with.
On the eve of the march, the Obama administration claimed that they had no idea that a rally was planned for the following day. This is most certainly untrue; The Secret Service was aware, the Speaker of the House was aware and gave warning in a memo, the Capitol police were prepared for the march, a permit was acquired that assumed an enormous number of attendees, and as the Whitehouse watches the Glenn Beck television program (they call-in during the show to ask the host to alter his language), the administration's statement is unquestionably apocryphal and only represents another in a long line of manufactured falsehoods that the American people have come to expect from this Whitehouse.
The Whitehouse has on several occasions recognized a lack of trust in the government and conveys publicly what looks to be sincere concern for that problem. But they have yet to recognize those, the Americans, who possess that lack of trust, either for purposely uninformed or intellectually dishonest reasons. A move that is completely contradictory from the President's claims of wanting bipartisanship and wanting to bring Americans of all stripes together.
Although pundits and liberal bloggers will dispute attendees for some time to come, one thing is certain there is an election coming up. Regardless of who covered the Tea Party in DC and who did not, they will all soon be forced to woo those Republicans, Independents and Democrats who share the beliefs of the DC Tea Partiers.
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