Today is my day off, and it's April 15th, and the local Tea Party is having some tax-free day rally down at the ball park so I thought I'd check it out. Not because I'm particularly sympathetic towards their cause or anything but I've been wanting to check one of these deals out for myself, maybe see what the fuss is all about. Their local website claims that they're expecting 15,000 people but I'll believe that when I see it.

I figure I'll just walk around and talk to a few people and maybe hit on a few chicks.  ;)




I will give you all a detailed report later tonight.  :)

I can't wait to hear all the gory details. I hope you have a camera.



Cat

I am curious, as to how it turns out!

I didn't stick around very long.

As soon as I went inside the ballpark, I almost immediately got this overwhelming feeling of "I do NOT belong here." I wasn't really afraid or anything like that, but I just kept walking and didn't really interact with anyone because I'm a bit of a smartass and figured I'd better just keep my mouth shut. So I walked around for about 20 minutes and left.

The thing that irritated me is how the Tea Party activists like to claim how they're supposedly fed up with both parties when it was so obvious to me that this was a thinly disguised GOP rally. Not to mention that everyone there had this huge hard-on for Sarah Palin when it's so obvious that she's a complete nimrod. (She's having an upcoming rally here in KC and some guy was hawking tickets for $40 a pop. No wonder she resigned as governor, even if she doesn't run for president she's still making a killing.)

There was actually a good turnout, there must've been at least 5,000 people there and more were steadily filing in, and this was at about 4 in the afternoon. And the thing is, the majority of them were people whom, individually, I probably could have had a beer and a good, friendly discussion with. These were the kind of people I worked with. I happen to have a lot of good friends who are Republicans and/or lean right politically and although we might disagree on politics we still get along. But when you get enough like-minded people together they'll tend to gang up on you if you don't happen to agree with them. (Which of course never happens here...)

As far as the accusations of the Tea Party being a violent movement, well, I didn't really get that vibe from the majority of people there. Were they pissed off? Yes, but they also seemed that for the most part they took pride in being law-abiding. If someone had walked in wearing some Obama gear they certainly would have gotten a lot of static but unless they deliberately provoked the crowd they probably wouldn't have had any physical harm done to them.

As far as the charges of racism, certainly there might have been some of that undercurrent but I didn't get the impression that's what it was all about.

My overall impression of the whole thing was, as I said earlier, that it was just a thinly disguised Republican rally.

That's kind of what I figured your average Tea Party rally would be like.  Mostly innocuous low-information voters.
8)

Not to mention that everyone there had this huge hard-on for Sarah Palin when it's so obvious that she's a complete nimrod.


And let's make it clear, he means "would vote for", not "would party with".  I hate taxes as much asmore than the next guy, but this is no longer an anti-tax organization.

The Tea Party had potential for about a week in February 2009, when that dude on CNBC lost it on air.  Ever since then, it's been nothing but a front group for the Republican Party.  There's nothing wrong with that if you're a Republican, but it hasn't been nonpartisan since about this time last year.  They're the Republican Party's version of useful idiots, to use the Leninist term.