Its just spreading and spreading:
They carried signs, chanted slogans, urged motorists to honk horns. There was even a folk singer urging the audience to “take back” the country.
Sounds like your average protest, right?
The difference here: many of the protesters were political conservatives who had never felt it necessary to take to the streets before.
And yet there they were, about 300 strong, lining both sides of Main Street in front of Ballard Park on Saturday for a “Tea Party” protest against President Barack Obama’s $3.5 trillion budget and the government’s effort to “stimulate” the sagging national economy through spending.
“The primary focus is a concern over the direction the policies of the current administration are taking us,” said Andrew “Skip” March, a Ridgefield resident who helped organize the protest, news of which spread like wildfire on the Web.
“We were pleased and a little surprised by the number. We thought we’d have 100, maybe a little more,” March said…
…they urged the country to embrace the conservative principles of limited government and fiscal responsibility.
“The stimulus package, the spending bills, they have not been handled well. There is too much pork,” said Brian Blackman, 50, a tech support trainer from Ridgefield taking part in his first-ever protest.
Blackman said Barack Obama has proven himself to be just another politician who will say anything to get elected.
“He was supposed to bring positive change and he most certainly did not,” Blackman said. “If anything, he is making things worse and my kids are in serious trouble right now. The economy was in trouble before, but now we’re in serious trouble. I don’t see a bright spot and I’m worried about the future.”
Now, had you liberals actually run on a tax and spend policy instead of hiding behind rhetoric about deficit reduction and tax cuts, you might not have this problem of people having a sense of betrayal by The One…of course, had you run on that then we might be hearing of Senator Obama making speeches denouncing President McCain’s policies. But now you’ve lied in front of everyone, and the lie is being noted – and anger is growing.
UPDATE: In Connecticut, 300 show up to protest Dodd and Obama, 40 to protest AIG executives. I think we’re winning this debate.
UPDATE II: More than 4,000 showed up in Orlando!
Singer Lloyd Marcus told the crowd assembled in Lake Eola Park on Saturday that he was going to give them his take on the first days of the Obama administration.
Then he shrieked.
That pretty much summed up the mood in the park Saturday afternoon, when more than 4,000 people attended the Orlando Tea Party, a conservative rally aimed at expressing discontent with Washington.
“This is maybe the greatest single gathering of God-fearing patriots in the history of Orlando, Florida,” local conservative radio host Bud Hedinger, who emceed the event, told the crowd.
The attendees, many of whom said they’d heard about the rally on Hedinger’s radio show, brandished flags and homemade signs bearing slogans such as “Repeal the pork or our bacon is cooked” and “Obama lied, liberty died.”
“We’re really scared about what’s happening in our country,” said Debby Whisenand, 71, of Largo in Pinellas County. She waved a sign that read “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” on one side, and “You can’t blame Bush anymore” on the other.
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