Sacramento Tax Day Tea Party, III -The Asps in our Bosom

As I alluded to in another place, there was a small smattering of dissent and disruption at our gathering. One fellow charged the stage, shouting mindlessly "Give me my freedom", or more properly: "GIVE ME MY FREEDOM!". Nothing else, just shouting the same phrase over and over, while he interrupted the speech and the First Amendment rights of a man who knew something about escaping to freedom and was contributing to its care and feeding.

Ironically, the mindless twit, whatever his ideology might have been, crazed fanatic or flying a faux flag, was handcuffed, wrestled off the stage and taken into custody, where whatever freedom he had in the morning was greatly decreased by mid afternoon!

In addition, there was one, slightly scruffy guy in a plaid shirt, wearing a back pack, who calmly walked through the crowd, holding aloft his "Obama in '08" sign.
Great! All you time travelers among us, this is your chance to go back and make history! Or, as one sign alluded to:

"The Obama administration is the beginning of a new chapter in American history: Chapter thirteen!"

The fellow pictured above seemed peaceful enough when I saw him towards the end of the rally, but must have done something to attract the attention of a least three sign bearing volunteers who may have deterred him from any further disruptions. Maybe he was just videoing the singer because he was too cheap to pay the $.99 at iTunes?

Early in the rally, there was one woman holding up a sign about ObamaCare, that might have been for it, but she was too far away for me to see that for sure. So, even counting her in the "enemy camp"*, that would make four counter protesters in a crowd of thousands.

And speaking of "counter protests", I saw on the news where some libs had organized a "coffee party" to "counteract" the Tea Party. The video was of a sidewalk bistro where it looked like there could have been a dozen people total. So, even if every one of them was there for the protest and not just the coffee, then the "counter protest" was a riotous success! (and will be counted as twelve jobs saved or created in Labor Department statistics!)

The crowd was well behaved. No racial slurs were shouted. In fact, one of the speakers, Larry Elder, a black talk show host from southern California, opened his remarks with the joke "Good afternoon, fellow racists!"

It was a mixed crowd, young and old, whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians. White collar, blue collar, and no collar people were there. I saw vets from four different wars: Iraq, Korea, Viet Nam and WWII.

I saw a lot of people, some of whom, like myself, had taken off work to attend, others traveled long distances to be there. And everyone I spoke to was concerned about the direction the country was taken. And despite the canard that the "Tea Party" is either owned by or a subsidiary of the Republican Party, there was dissatisfaction with and words plainly spoken that simply having an "R" after one's name will not garner these people's vote.

It seems as though there are a lot of people who would like to co-opt the Tea Party. There are some Republicans who would like to take them for granted. I saw at least one RonPaulian at the rally with a sign that seemed to indicate that Ron Paul would be happy to run to the front of the movement and yell "Follow me!".

As has been said in another place, there are libertarians in the movement who might like to co-opt it for their own ends. There may even be a smattering (though by no means a majority) who entertain the notion that the Tea Party could become a viable third party. (They cannot.) But, the reason that so many people want to co-opt the Tea Party, is that the Tea Party is a force to be reckoned with. It is a grass roots movement, not Astro-turf manufactured by some Axelrod on the Right. It is composed of people passionate for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. People who are fed up with politicians who say they do not care what the Constitution says about any particular law they might enact. People are fed up with politicians governing againt the will of the people.

And that's why the liberals have their undies in a twist about them. That's why they fear them. Progressieve policies do not withstand sunlight well. Between now and November, there's going to be quite a lot of light shed on the actions of this administration and the liberal cockroaches are going to be scurrying for cover.

To no avail.


*Please consult a dictionary if this word is unfamiliar to you. Hint: It is not short for "campaign"!

Cross posted at Say Anything

For the rest of the Sacramento Tax Day Tea party posts, see
I
II
IV
V
VI