From TPM Reader KC …
I attended the Tea Baggers’ rally in Washington today and observed the crowd as it marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and again once it filled in the first and part of the second blocks on the mall. I cannot reliably estimate the size of the crowd, but I can compare it to anti-war rallies in Washington from 2003 to 2005.
The crowd today appeared to be approximately 1/3 the size of the September 2005 ANSWER rally that police estimated to be about 150,000 people. Although the numbers were relatively small, the overall impression on the ground was that of a successful protest. I attended because I live in Washington and wanted to understand who attended these events. I expected a small crowd of die hard wingnuts. I was surprised by the size of the crowd. I was also surprised by the range of people in attendance. Some in the crowd appeared to be low functioning zealots suffering from serious mental illness and/or undisguised racial hatred. However, most of the people who marched by my vantage point appeared to be rather earnest but misled members of the lower middle class who were just regurgitating Fox News memes concerning imagined threats to America. (Death panels, free medical care for illegal immigrants, onerous taxation, insidious socialism, etc.) I purchased a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag that I attached to my backpack and then talked to a dozen or so people who were all very excited about the turnout and expressed the belief that they represented the majority of the American public. They sounded pretty much like the target group of Nixon/Phillip’s southern strategy. I received the impression that they were living in a Fox bubble and would be shocked if they do not win the day.
