Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Tea Party - Columbia, S.C.

Here are some photos from the Tea Party in downtown Columbia today. Jim DeMint was there, as was Gov. Sanford. There was a good turn-out, several hundred, easily. Where was Lindsay Graham?




Here is Gov. Sanford speaking to the crowd.



















Here's Jim DeMint talking to the crowd.







Here's somebody's kid (ahem...) holding a sign. Some nice lady gave him the sign.
Here's some other abusive parent who dragged his/her kid down to a political protest.

3 comments:

mom said...

I was there. There were more like a couple of thousand people.

Anonymous said...

The tea party ROCKED! I was one of the 9-12er's there (the crowd with the black t-shirts on). We think there were over 2000 there. And, the work is just beginning! If you want to connect with like-minded folks, please visit www.the912projectsc.org. God bless America!

S. Harlan Cone said...

I get the reasoning and don't disagree, but the Tea Party thing can be too easily parodied. And that's the language of my age group.

When liberal bloggers and celebrity figures can so easily say, "Wait, people whose taxes will go down are protesting that MY taxes will go up," the metaphor is no longer bulletproof.

And MSNBC spent about ten minutes dragging it through maybe the worst innuendo on television in a long time.

I understand the trickle-down value of tax cuts for wealthy business owners, but a conservative hollywood blogger (!) rightly pointed out that poor people won't get it because we use extra money to pay down debt and, you know, *survive*.

The key is better economic education through grassroots movements. Easily torn down metaphors are only good for short burst publicity. It's not going to build up whatever the conservative economic folks need to be.

:^/

We'll get Obama again in 4 years, even if he does continue to screw up, simply because the people who elected him this time and who might be disappointed (the record turnout young'uns) don't see a viable alternative.

This is deeply frustrating for someone like me, who regrets his vote this time but still doesn't see an "out" next time.