I’ve rather enjoyed watching the way the left has been spinning the tea parties. It’s gone from “no big deal; nothing new” to “they’re being funded by Fox News and the Republican party” (yeah, right…), to now “they’re an epic fail” because they “only” had a quarter of a million protestors.
The movement started two months ago, back in mid-February, by a mommy blogger who wanted to express her outrage over Obama signing the stimulus bill. It wasn’t inspired by Rick Santelli, in spite of popular belief and the left’s penchant for rewriting history…
The movement’s been gaining momentum ever since, with weekly tea parties in various cities across the country. Some cities have hosted more than one tea party already, in advance of the April 15th nationwide event.
Again, in spite of liberal spin, this movement wasn’t founded or organzied by the Republican Party or Fox News, but Fox has been the only cable news network to actually cover the story as it’s been unfolding.
Gee… no wonder most of the old media is teetering on the brink of financial ruin, when they routinely dismiss news stories if they don’t fit their political agenda…
Now back to the regularly scheduled snark and rant…
Depending on whose crowd estimates you believe:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/pjtvs-crowd-estimates-for-tea-parties-still-climbing/ this is the main article, click the internal link to see the “final” (or currently still in the process of counting) attendance numbers.
Here’s the direct link to PJTV’s current estimate, based on videos and photos sent in by their citizen reporters: http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=tea-party
If you’d rather get your estimates from another site, take your pick here:
http://northshorejournal.org/tea-party-turnout-nationwide
I’d hasten to add this: I know the 538 numbers, as well as the NRO numbers are low, based on the fact that those are only a PARTIAL count of the protest sites. (Something like 325 or thereabouts.) At the time the instapundit first linked to PJTV’s numbers, they were at about the same level as 538’s estimate. While PJTV’s numbers have increased due to reports still coming in from their citizen reporters, the other sites have not changed their estimates. It’s possible this is being done intentionally (at least on the 538 site) to low-ball the numbers in order to give the left their current talking point of the event being an epic fail, since it *only* drew a quarter of a million souls.
However, I’d maintain that when you consider —
1) these people had to leave their home or work to protest, and do so by their own initiative (they didn’t have busses come pick them up and drop them off directly at the protest site)
2) they were not paid to protest
3) they were not funded by some deep-pocketed captialist pig like George Soros or Warren Buffet, but paid for their events out of their own pockets — which constituted paying for permits or insurance
4) managed to get this kind of turnout after only two months’ worth of organizing, mainly done over the internet
Well… you have to admit, it’s an impressive feat. Hardly an “epic fail.”
Well… you have to admit it, if you’re not a blind lefty… However, if you’re married to the left’s constant rewriting of the narrative, then you can swallow that this was an epic fail.
But I’d like to pose a question to anyone on the left: weren’t you talking about sending your own counter protestors to the Tea Party event of April 15th?
You’d think, given the deep pockets you can stick your hands into, thanks to your kindly Uncle George, your vast network of contacts, your friends in the MSM and the WH, and your professional organization, already in place… you’d think with all that, you could’ve managed to mount a pretty serious counter-protest. But what did YOU come up with? Maybe 15 protestors against the 1700+ tea partiers in Knoxville, TN. From what I’ve read, that’s pretty standard, in the places where you had any counter-protestors at all. Less than one percent of the turnout of the Tea Party.
I don’t know about you, but that has “epic fail” written all over it, from where I’m sitting. So I guess this is yet another case of liberal projection… heh.
Methinks the left is trying desperately to convince the Tea Partiers that their event was an epic fail in the hope that they won’t attempt another demonstration. Good luck with that, guys…
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