I wrote earlier about how the "recess rallies" were a huge failure for the St. Louis tea party, falling far short of their own goals, and getting only 1/5 of the turnout of their previous rallies, which they called a "warm up" to the recess rallies. Well, they have somehow managed to top even that massive failure.
Organizing for America put together a huge pro health care reform rally tonight. The teabaggers were desparate to try to stage a big counter-rally to try to grab some of the media attention they so desparately crave. Bill Hennessy, the leader of the St. Louis tea party, put forward a couple clear goals. One goal was to have more teabaggers attend the rally than reform supporters:
Another goal was to have 500 people attend:
Well, unsuprisingly, they fell massively short of both goals. Check out some pics of their puny numbers at one corner:
And the other corner:
These were taken about ten minutes for the rally started. They had a few more people trickle in after that, but these are pretty much representative of their final numbers. The best estimate is probably around 50 people, although if I was feeling generous I might say 75. In other words, in a best case scenario for them, they only got about 1/6 of their goal of 500 people. More likely they got 1/10. And considering there were well over 500 pro-reform people there (my best guess was 800 to 1000), they did even worse on their stated goal of "outnumbering" reform supporters.
Yup, the tea party movement is in its dying pangs. Just like the angry mobs at Palin's rallies, anger and stupidity are a great way to capture people's attention for short burst of time, but pretty bad long-term strategies.
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Great article Adam!
ReplyDeleteI must say I am not sure what was best about tonight's counter teabag protest: the actual horrible numbers they had or the number of teabaggers who crossed their "Yellow Flag with Snake" line, including wearing Health Care Reform stickers and holding signs.
What a bunch of gutless activists they make. At least when the real liberal activists counter their tea parties we don't try to blend in and fake them out.
Tonight several well known conservative bloggers totally crossed their teabag party lines to listen to reasoning. (I even saw several clap and cheer.)
A couple of points in response to yesterday's 24th State article-Sunday Night Clean Up. Jim states that "Tea Party folks didn't take pictures of every person coming in". Interesting, I was not aware that they had been actually accused of doing this sort of targeting of progressives...but I certainly did notice the mass of videos produced at the Carnahan town hall meeting. Including overhead views and walk through the crowd views. I'm just saying....
ReplyDeleteMr. Durbin also brings up the arrest of Zack Lyde in Georgia. "And nationally, we see yet another Green Party member and minister involved in violent intimidation of a Tea Party rally. It's enough to make you wonder if there are actual marching orders coming from avowed socialists to disrupt Tea Party events"
Well, "violent intimidation" is a bit of a stretch as Mr. Lyde was only arrested for protesting without a permit. Once again, we only see the end of an event...Lyde was obviously upset about something that had come before...saying.."Yes, you were hollering, you were honking, you were blowing...." I tell ya, it's enough to make you wonder if there are actual marching orders coming from avowed facists to cause the arrest of Southern Black Baptist minster members of the Green Party. Just saying...
FYI, note that on this video-
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnCALTX__wI&feature=PlayList&p=E4C833D187A964B1&index=0
starting around frame 50, you can see a woman who looks very much like the woman arrested for allegedly breaking Kelly's camera. Not a positive id, but same body type (then again, many of these teabaggers are, shall we say....well-fed) same scraggly blond hair and note the sunglasses on top of her head at the beginning of the Gladney video.
The Teabag Taliban's media circus is fizzling fast....
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