Congresswoman Michele Bachmann speaks to millions of Tea Party Patriots at the “Continuing Revolution” rally on Capitol Hill, March 31
Steve Benen: …Tea party organizers had high hopes for their rally today in Washington, DC – high enough hopes that they arranged for Fox to give it live coverage.
Then something sad happened. Just a few dozen people showed up. And Fox, naturally, blamed the weather.
Sen. Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite who has an incentive to exaggerate the crowd size, said 200 people showed up, but if the media footage is at all accurate, even that pathetic number is inflated.
Put in this way: the number of reporters and Republican lawmakers, when combined, rivaled the size of the attendees. That’s not good.
As for Fox News blaming the weather, let’s not forget that tens of thousands of progressive activists showed up in the snow in Wisconsin a few weeks back. With federal spending on the line, today’s Tea Party crowd was less than 1% as big … because of a little rain? That’s just sad.
Chances are, this little get together will be forgotten by dinner time, but part of me wonders if it might end up having the opposite of the intended effect. The goal was to offer a right-wing show of force – with a shutdown deadline looming, lawmakers were supposed to think to themselves, “I better not cross those throngs of activists who gathered at the Capitol on March 31.”
But the point is, practically no one showed up. How many members of Congress will be afraid to cross “those tens of activists” who were on hand today?
Full article here
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