Tea parties

I just got back from the Cincinnati tea party. It was a cold, drizzly day, but we had at least 5,000 people there. It could have been much more. The march was really long, and it would have made impressive video from the air, but I didn't see any helicopter coverage. I've seen many, much smaller political rallies get tons of coverage in the past, so I hope Cincinnati's does too, but I didn't see hardly any press.

There were very few counter-protesters, maybe 50 at most, and they tried to cause some problems by running through the crowd and into people, but a couple that actually ran into somebody got arrested. I'm willing to bet that the counter protesters get at least as much coverage as the main protest.

I was very disappointed in the lack of black people. I only saw a couple of black protesters, but most of the counter-protesters were black. I'm sure any coverage will try to minimize the parties by focusing on race.

The three speakers sucked in general and talked too long, but all three criticized Republicans as much as Democrats. I think that was staged though. When one speaker asked Democrats to raise their hands, I only saw 2 in the thousand or so people I could see at that time. When he asked about Republicans, about half that I could see raised their hands. This guy was hinting pretty heavily that the group should vote Libertarian, but he never said the word libertarian.

The thing I liked least of all was the thousands of people reciting the pledge of allegiance like good little socialists. It makes my skin crawl when I see that. The pledge of allegiance sounds like a Nazi or Soviet loyalty oath to me, and that's because it was designed by a socialist to promote the socialist movement in the US. Yuk!

But all in all, it was a pretty well organized and executed event.

Dayton's is from 6 to 8 this evening.
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I recently got home from the Dayton tea party. Not surprisingly, it had much in common with the Cincinnati tea party. The signs at both were great. Assuming I was right about 5,000 in Cincinnati (somebody told me that was in the middle of numerous estimates), the Dayton tea party had about 3,500 people. It was by far the most crowded I've seen Courthouse Square in three years excepting the Christmas tree lighting, which is nuts. Also the crowd in Dayton seemed more energetic, active and independent, and the speakers were better and shorter. That makes sense to me knowing the character of both Dayton and Cincinnati.

One interesting point was Dayton's crowd was full of FairTax people. I assume that's because Boortz is on the air in Dayton but not Cincinnati. I saw only one FairTax sign in Cincinnati in the thousand or so people I was immersed in. I saw at least 30 FairTax signs in Dayton in the same thousand or so people.

Apparently no counter-protesters showed up in Dayton. I didn't see one. Not one person I talked to after the event even saw one.

I did see several, not a bunch, black people protesting with us in Dayton. The crowd could easily be painted white by the media because most protesters were white, but unlike in Cincinnati, that would be untrue. There were enough black protesters in Dayton to break that stereotype, imo.

All that said, the Dayton event was after work while Cincinnati's was in the middle of lunch, so comparing them is like comparing apples to oranges.

I wish I had taken a camera. 20-20 hindsight is worth what you pay for it.
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Personally, I see the glass half full, but more I see it half empty. First, I'm not a ra-ra guy. I came to my conclusions about freedom through personal analysis and reason. Nobody convinced me to be a libertarian. I never attended a rally. I never had a libertarian role model. I never read about political theory including libertarianism. I became a libertarian through personal reflection, observation, experience and reason before I ever knew that libertarian thought or libertarians existed.

So to me, these tea parties are passe. I'm glad to see many people have caught a whiff of the love of freedom I've been espousing since 1988. But these people don't feel it like I do. Despite all the rhetoric of limited government transcending political affiliation I heard today, this movement seems more a political convenience to most of the people I saw. Even my girlfriend was moved. For a couple hours. I doubt it will last to the 2010 elections, let alone over the long haul. Anybody who needs cheerleaders to incite them to care about freedom isn't a freedom lover.

On the other hand, I'm ecstatic to see people who have voted for big, bad government their entire lives suddenly rejecting it. I've written extensively here about the need for conservatives to reject the Bush/Republican/big government policies of the past. I heard exactly that today. These tea partiers threw Bush and Republicans under the bus where they deserved to be for the last 12 years as quickly as they threw Obama and Democrats. That's an indisputably positive development.

But as I sat in a downtown Dayton bar tonight and talked to a senior local Republican party machine official, he promised me that the local and national party would stand by my Republican representative Turner in 2010 despite his running just to the right of Nancy Pelosi. He promised me, while talking excitedly about change and reform and grassroots efforts, that nothing would change here. It was phenomenally disheartening because I can see every local Republican organization in America saying, "yay for change in all the other organizations except ours."

So as excited as I am by the people today, I fully expect this movement to die a grotesque death on the vine come primary and election time and devolve into lesser of two evils politics as usual.
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This article says there were 6,000 protesters in Dayton. If that's true, there were 8 to 9 thousand in Cincinnati.