The WaPo and NYT say “tens of thousands,” while Michelle Malkin and The Daily Mail say “two million,” and we may never know any better estimates, but a large number of people gathered in Washington, D.C. to protest against Obama and the Democrats. If you are pro-Obama, it is not a good sign. Vodkapundit says “It’s ABC (TV, radio? Not sure.) that pegged the crowd at two million, not CNN. Official estimate is 1.5 — but those numbers always sound inflated. Settle for a million and call it a damn fine day.”
WSJ says,
Conservative activists from around the country are gathering in Washington on Saturday, seeking to continue their momentum in shaping the national debate on everything from health care to White House staffing.
a 17-hour bus ride Thursday from Tallahassee, Fla., to Washington to protest government policies.The demonstrators, who plan to march up Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, are drawing their passion not from Bush-era fights over terrorism or gay marriage, but rather from Reagan-era debates over big government programs. The event comes on the heels of antitax events, dubbed tea parties, in April, and a series of congressional town-hall meetings nationwide last month that elicited angry criticism of health-care proposals favored by President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies.
“I can’t figure out to save me what [Mr. Obama and the Democrats] are trying to accomplish, unless they want socialism,” said 73-year-old Joseph Wright, a retired paper-mill worker. Mr. Wright rode from Tallahassee, Fla., to Washington this week on one of the many chartered buses bringing in demonstrators from states as far-flung as Massachusetts and Arkansas.
Saturday’s rally comes just a few months after Mr. Obama’s victory seemed to have left the conservative movement in disarray. But in recent weeks, critics of the administration’s programs and spending have succeeded in putting Mr. Obama on the defensive, threatening his health-care drive, prompting parents to boycott a routine presidential speech to schoolchildren and forcing the resignation of a White House adviser with a left-leaning past.
One of the uglier signs…
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The Daily Mail explains for its British readers,
Today’s protests imitated the original Boston Tea Party of 1773, when colonists threw three shiploads of taxed tea into Boston Harbour in protest against the British government under the slogan ‘No taxation without representation’.
The group first began rising to prominence in April, when the governor of Texas threatened to secede from the union in protest against government spending. Waves of tea party protests have crossed America since.
Today’s rally, the largest grouping of fiscal conservatives to march on Washington, comes on the heels of heated town halls held during the congressional August recess when some Democratic lawmakers were confronted, disrupted and shouted down by angry protestors who oppose President Obama’s plan to overhaul the health care system.
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