Wingnut Counting

QOTD, Speed (commenter at Benen's place):

1,2,3...wait, uh, 1,2,3,4...let me start over...1,2,3...no, I counted him already..1,2...

I want to start this by saying I went to the first several anti-Iraq War marches in DC. Tried to stop the war. Didn't manage to do that. But I remember the sense of amazement when so many people came out for the first march in late 2002, the second on a cold day in January 2003, from all over the country. Mostly just folks, mostly people who hadn't done anything like that before - like me. Nobody knew if anyone would come. There were no big backers, no Teevee stations flogging it, mostly just word on mouth - and well over 100,000 showed up. It was astonishing and energizing to see so many people of like mind moved to drop everything and make the trek to DC, trying to stop insanity. That the media ignored, or ridiculed, or sought to minimize those turnouts was deeply frustrating. But the knowledge that many people shared your concerns remained.

So I would never minimize the passion that brought a respectable crowd to DC yesterday to protest - well, protest lots of different things. I would suggest, however, that they learn how to count. And possibly how to focus.

How best to start this collection than with John Cole. John was a real wingnut blogger at the time I trekked to DC in October 2002 to protest the coming war. He would certainly have ridiculed my efforts at the time. The scales fell from his eyes sometime in 2005.

John Cole: Mass Teabagging

Here is a roundup of the hijinks. Where can I find the funny pictures?

The protests, for some reason, were a little bit bigger than the massive wave of protests from these “fiscal conservatives” when the Republicans and George Bush passed on trillions of unfunded liabilities with the Prescription Drug Act. I just can’t figure out why. It is almost like this is just partisan nonsense whipped up by Koch foundation funded outlets.

I think the thing that pisses me off the most about this (apart from the obvious hypocrisy that none of these people would even flinch if any of this had been proposed by Bush and Tom DeLay) is that this is what happened in the real aftermath of 9/11:

And now, the memory of 9/11 is being latched onto by partisan hacks, astroturfing wingnut welfare foundations, right-wing radio hosts, wingnut bloggers, glibertarian shit-heels, and the usual hodge-podge of misanthropes, racists, and redneck socipaths to pursue a completely partisan agenda. These people really are shameless, especialy since the Republican party just spent the last eight years using 9/11 to do whatever they wanted. I guess now they have just moved on to 9/12. Assholes.

C&L: How I missed the 2 million man teabagging flash mob today

By kombiz Sunday Sep 13, 2009 8:00am

I apparently missed the largest flash mob in American history today, and it took place just a few blocks from my house. Michelle Malkin and the redstaters have been abuzz about how there were more than two million people marching on Washington today, (that would make it bigger than even the inauguration) but all anyone who wasn't a right-winger saw today was 30,000 to 60,000 right-wingers bused in from around the country.

Here's what the organizers themselves told us to expect. Dick Armey told the right-wing Newsmax that they're generating hundreds of responses in interest to the 9/12 March. The tea party patriots told us that they were expecting as many as one million to turn out and that they had permits for a one million man march on Washington.

After reading breathlessly on the twitter feeds of several right-wingers that millions of people were descending on the capital, Michelle Malkin on her blog estimated two million people. I went up to take pictures of crazy signs, of which there were many, many, many, many samples.

Now, there were real people at the rally. At certain points organizers for different county Republican parties would use a bullhorn to try to round up their members back to the buses for the trip back to Pennsylvania and Virginia. But one would think that after six months of organizing by Fox News and local Republican parties, the 9/12 protests could get more than thirty to sixty thousand people to come out to D.C. After all, there's apparently a groundswell of anger at the President. If nothing else, there's got to be more than 30,000 Republicans who live around the DC area.

I wanted to provide some perspective about the difference between thirty thousand people and one million people. For reference, the teabaggers were mostly in front of the Capitol and around the Capitol's reflecting pool. For anyone not familiar with DC, they were directly to the east of 3rd Street in Washington.

For reference, I crossed 3rd Street and took a picture facing west from the Capitol at the Washington Monument, similar to some of the crowd shots we'd seen after the inauguration. Here's the difference between the teabaggers' protest today vs. President Obama's inaguration crowd, which included anywhere from 1 million to 1.5 million people. So, what happened to all that grassroots anger?

TPM: Pretty Impressive

From TPM Reader CJ ...

I went down to the protest on the mall today just to have a look. The crowd was actually pretty impressive. I didn't have a good vantage point of the whole crowd, but I would say there were easily tens of thousands, maybe upwards of 50 thousand. But I was amused to hear more than one person really inflate those numbers. I overheard a guy on his cell phone saying there were two million people there, and another woman say a million and a half.

I worked for the Inaugural Committee this year, where a crowd that was more likely around 2 million gathered. I was on the mall and looked down it from the Capitol steps. It was a sea of people as far as the eye could see. Anyone who was there would be able to give their own personal story of the incredible logistical nightmare caused by the presence of two million people.No such city-wide chaos ensued today. You get my point.

I was prompted to photoshop this Inauguration Day photo. I hope you will post it for me. My job makes me have to be anonymous about it.

Benen: I ONCE SAW A CROWD THIS BIG...

Going into yesterday protest in Washington, there were a few questions about what observers should expect. How nutty would the signs be? Would GOP lawmakers embrace the right-wing activists or stay away?

And perhaps most importantly, how many would show up?

Some organizers, relying on a non-existent report from ABC News, exaggerated the crowd size by a factor of 15.

Conservative activists, who organized a march on the U.S. Capitol today in protest of the Obama administration's health care agenda and government spending, erroneously attributed reports on the size of the crowds to ABC News.

Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the group that organized the event, said on stage at the rally that ABC News was reporting that 1 million to 1.5 million people were in attendance.

At no time did ABC News, or its affiliates, report a number anywhere near as large. ABCNews.com reported an approximate figure of 60,000 to 70,000 protesters, attributed to the Washington, D.C., fire department. In its reports, ABC News Radio described the crowd as "tens of thousands."

I'm not entirely sure which came first, but Malkin was also pushing the line that ABC News believed there 2 million people on hand for yesterday's event. Whether Malkin's bogus claim came before or after Kibbe's bogus claim isn't clear, but neither were remotely close to reality.

Alas, that did not stop a wide variety of far-right sites from running with the absurd claim.

Making matters slightly more embarrassing, several conservative sites ran with a purported aerial photo of the protest, which seemed to show a full Washington Mall. The picture seemed odd -- the first clue was that the National Museum of the American Indian did not appear in the photo -- and was later exposed as a shot from the Promise Keepers' rally from 1997.

In truth, I don't think the right has to feel embarrassed about an event that drew 70,000 people. That's a modest turnout compared to recent events like President Obama's inauguration or the pro-immigration rallies in 2006, and it's underwhelming given Fox News' role in promoting yesterday's gathering, but getting 70,000 conservatives together for an event with no clear purpose isn't bad. Wild exaggerations only diminish what was actually a decent sized crowd.

TPM: One View From The Ground

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.

Yglesias: Tea Party Patriotism

I wouldn’t want to tell you that the majority of the people I saw at this morning’s tea party were such hard-core patriots that they felt the need to walk around waving flags of treason and slavery:

Still it did strike me as noteworthy that your basic tea party crowd isn’t the sort of crowd in which a Confederate flag is unwelcome. I feel like if you’d tried to bring this to a health care rally, folks would have gotten upset. But the tea parties, like a lot of big time conservative events, are a very racism friendly environment. This guy, for example, clearly isn’t so much the type to march with a racist shirt on as he is the kind of guy who’d march with a shirt ridiculing the idea of anti-racism:

As was the case with the bulk of the protesters, there was very little sense that anyone had any actual specific complaint with Obama’s health care proposals. That one woman loves the confederacy. This guy thinks guns are great and diversity is stupid. Many protesters feel that abortion is murder and/or that Barack Obama is in league with terrorists. But nobody had a sign urging the president to adopt more stringent cost control measures, or slamming the concept of regulations to require insurers to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

Benen: SIGN OF THE TIMES...

As expected, far-right protestors in Washington yesterday brought a wide variety of offensive signs, placards, and flags. One, however, seems to have stood out above the others.

This gem was distributed widely in D.C. and was apparently produced by a right-wing anti-abortion group called the American Life League. It is, as Matt Yglesias put it, "the kind of pro-life organization that thinks that it would be terrible if people who get sick could have access to medical care."

And as Amanda Marcotte added, this is the same group that, in the wake of Ted Kennedy's death, had "a full-blown meltdown to find out that the Catholic response to one of their own dying wasn't to boycott the funeral and pray that Kennedy is in hell."

Classy bunch.

TPM: Entitled

TPM Reader AG went too ...

I was at the Lawn with all of the red shirted, white, angry Beck loving neo-patriots and there in no way it was a million people or even close. There were small groups huddled around the Glen Beck inspired flags and the usual disaffected white males wandering in groups with the American flag desecrated by being incorporated into clothing. Having been to the exact same location for the Obama Inauguration and other large political events, this was small fry in comparison. However, it was an angry group with a real sense of absolute entitlement. Something not focused on by many. This sense of entitlement that they deserve to be the dominant deciders and that it's being taken away.

I of course wore a Health Care Reform t-shirt and an Obama cap while on my jog. Very interesting mix of people. Mostly what one would expect. Rural, Southern/plain states, white, with a great number of middle aged white men with either military crew cuts or biker tattoos. There were a very small number of blacks but interestingly absolutely no Hispanics or Asian Americans anywhere at all. I stayed away from the groups of men wandering around in biker jackets with tattoos carrying flags. Interestingly not a lot of American flags but a lot of other flags including the yellow don't tread on me flag. I actually felt relieved by this event even though there were signs that were shocking because I do not think it will have the impact the organizers were hoping for. And my main thought I had as I observed these people was how many of them will forget they were against Health Care reform ten years from now when it is a part of American life and many have seen lower costs and their family members covered. One could almost imagine what it was like when Medicare was introduced, the civil rights bills, forced busing, etc., And how many of those people are now advocates or accept it to be a positive part of America.

Anyone notice that Rep. Pence quoted Ronald Reagan from 1964? The quote was about how the states should not allow the far off federal government dictate the way States can decide laws. That pretty much summed it all up right there. Amazed that the press does not ask him if he agrees with the context of the quote.

Benen: WHAT CONSTITUTES FRONT-PAGE NEWS.....

In recent years, Josh Marshall has talked many times about the ways in which the Washington establishment is "wired for the GOP." The Washington Post offers a helpful example today.

Behold the media's glaring double standard. Today, the Post puts the "tens of thousands" of Obama-hating tea bagger protesters on A1; makes it the lead story as a matter of fact.

Compare and contrast.

And just so there's no doubt in people's mind, the blanket coverage the mini-mobs are lapping up (i.e. the mobs are hugely important!) stands in stark contrast to the way the press often did its best to ignore liberal protesters who spoke out against the war in Iraq.

For instance, in October 2002, when more than 100,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C., to oppose the war, The Washington Post put the story not on the front page, but in the Metro section with, as the paper's ombudsman later lamented, "a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest's fringe elements."

Not that crowd size is the be-all, end-all of an event's significance, but it's worth remembering that no credible count of yesterday's right-wing protest puts it in the 100,000 range. (And the anti-war protestors didn't have the advantage of a highly-rated cable network promoting their event every day for months.)

So, 70,000 far-right activists protesting a general sense of anger with progressive government are a major story, 100,000 liberal activists protesting a specific war policy are an afterthought.

This isn't just about the WaPo in particular. I suspect if we compared the coverage on, say, CNN of both protests, yesterday's coverage was more extensive.

There are competing angles to explain something like this, and some can make a compelling case that the media just overcompensates -- outlets are so afraid of being accused of "liberal bias," they go out of their way to promote one side's concerns over the other.

But I still think it gets back to the fact that D.C. is just "wired" for Republicans. Anti-war protestors, the thinking goes, were liberal hippies out of step with the mainstream. After all, there was a Republican president and Republican House in 2002, and polls showed reasonably strong support for the war in Iraq. Why pretend the liberal protestors are important?

In contrast, seven years later, Tea Baggers have to be considered a major political movement. There's a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress in 2009, and polls show reasonably strong support for the administration's economic agenda, but the right-wing cries can't be relegated to a few throw-away paragraphs in the Metro section.

On "60 Minutes" tonight, the president will note, "In the era of 24-hour cable news cycles, the loudest shrillest voices get the attention." That's only partially true -- it depends on what the shrill voices are saying and from what perspective.

Benen on 9/12...

I'll concede that I've never fully been able to understand or relate to the concerns of those gathering on the Washington Mall today. Indeed, like the "Tea Parties" in April, I'm not altogether sure what it is they're protesting. Being mad about your side losing a presidential election doesn't seem like an especially compelling rationale for a rally in D.C., but maybe that's just me.

Six months ago, when Glenn Beck first talked about organizing today's event, he said he intended to "bring us all back to the place we were on September 12, 2001. The day after America was attacked we were not obsessed with Red States, Blue States, or political parties. We were united as Americans."

By any meaningful measure, this is, at a minimum, disingenuous. Beck, Dick Armey, and right-wing organizers have been obsessed with ideological warfare and tearing the country apart. Their goals are to attack Democrats and undermine the Obama presidency. There's nothing especially wrong with that -- conservative Republicans are in the minority, and it stands to reason they'd oppose the majority's agenda -- but it has nothing to do with where Americans were eight years ago today.

Time's James Poniewozik's take on today's events struck the right note.

[A]s someone who happened to be in New York City eight years ago today, the implicit premise of the 9-12 Project -- that those who aren't on Beck's side must have somehow "forgotten" 9/11 and its aftermath -- ticks me off royally and personally.

I was at home in Brooklyn, holding my six-week-old baby on the couch, when I saw the second plane crash into the World Trade Center on TV. I watched the smoking pit of the ruins from the roof of my apartment building as bits of memo paper and ash drifted on the winds to my neighborhood. I was there on 9/11, and 9/12, and 9/13. You'll excuse me if I don't feel warm nostalgia for the lingering smell of burnt airplane fuel, and metal, and bodies.

Nor, of course, does Beck. What he purportedly wants is to bring back our feeling of "unity." I remember that feeling. After 9/11, I remember hardcore liberal New Yorkers rallying behind Rudy Giuliani, saying nice things about President Bush when he spoke at the WTC ruins. I remember thousands of American flags being flown out of apartment and brownstone windows, not as political statements or in the you-better-prove-your-patriotism spirit of flag pins and Freedom Fries, but simply because we felt we Americans were all in this together.

So since March, what has Glenn Beck been doing to re-establish that sense of nonpartisan national brotherhood? Calling President Obama a racist, declaring that the government was bringing fascism upon us, asking his fans to dig up dirt on political figures he doesn't like, and predicting civil-war-like uprisings. Because that's how you bring people together.

It's precisely why the message of today's gathering is largely incoherent. Beck insisted his intention is to see us "united as Americans." Except, he wants nothing of the sort, and by all appearances, those gathering in D.C. today have the exact opposite in mind.

The point of today's protests seems to be to condemn the president, his party, and a progressive economic agenda in general. While Americans rallied behind the nation's leaders eight years ago, today's activists are desperate to see America's elected leadership fail.

What does this have to do with the feeling of national unity and civility Americans felt in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks? Not a thing. "9/12" is a shallow excuse to rant and rave, attack Americans the right doesn't like, and share hysterical right-wing ideas and conspiracy theories.

That's their right, of course, but to characterize this as a celebration of American unity is ridiculous.