I put in 13 hours at work yesterday.
One huge disadvantage that conservatives have compared to liberals is that our supporters have jobs and families. We have real responsibilities outside of politics.
Liberals get their support from government employees, teachers, professors, non-profits, and lawyers. These people often WORK on the issues that they advocate. When they put in 13 hours in a day, it is on the political issues that they advocate. Or else they have jobs that they can leave for hours at a time and not get fired.
Liberals also tend to be unmarried and childless, which also gives them more time to be activists for their issues.
Keep this all in mind as the media taunts us with how many people attended the tea parties. Getting 5000 conservatives to show up to a single tea party in Atlanta is huge. Those 5000 represent 5 million, at least.
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Sorry you had to work... I was able to take a long lunch.. so did 1500 other people in Austin TX at noon. So did more than half a million people across the country.
Most of us are busy people with jobs and lives. That commitment and crowd size should be a wake up call to DC.
I'd say half a million people speaks pretty poorly for the cause. Even if you could assume a 10:1 ratio due to people working you only get 5 million. Hell 100:1 is only 50 million. US pop is about 384 million. So at 100:1 that is only 13% of the US pop.
Same thing for Austin, TX. 100:1 is only 23% of the Austin pop.
Here's where the TEA freaks come back with conservatives have jobs and the ratio is easily 10,000:1.
LOL
Spin Buzzcut, spin. Your drivel to substantiate low turn out is hilarious. Please tell me you (like Glen Beck) think you are a comedian. The turn out was piss poor, let alone the QUALITY of those that turned out. If it meant so much, as other have mentioned they were in urban areas during lunch time.
The point is the GOP is inept and will continue to be. The party is dead, and the country and wider world is better off without the allstars of the GOP.
Did you see, Jindal tolds Chenney to lay off Obama... More comedy.
Wasn't the point of my post that I was working, and could not attend?
How many people are in my boat?
Contrast that with Obama rallies, full of students, homeless people, and other unemployables that ACORN bussed in.
It isn't an apples to apples comparison.
I think you guys are wrong about the raw numbers, too. Even if it is only a half million people, even if a small number of them are truly impassioned, you can do a lot with that.
Geroge Janiec almost beat Tom McDermott for Hammond Mayor, spending no more than $1.98, being outspent literally a million to one, because he had a couple of motivated people from Team Hammond and First Baptist Church on his side. It doesn't take 100 million people to start a revolution.
Hell, how many people were with Obama back in '07?
I'm stunned by any backlash for any peaceful protest in this country.
The dismissing of these protests as being organized by conservatives groups (duh) smacks of the illegal immigrant rallies being dismissed because organized by labor unions. It's funny how both sides find ways to dismiss the other sides protests. I'm not sure how any rally is supposed to happen if there is not someone behind the scenes organizing them.
BigReub - was the total 500K? It's hard to find cumulative number but if you have a link would you post it? 500K seems pretty positive to me. And if you could mark that up to 50 mill why would you dismiss that? It may be only 13% of the population, but considering only 122 million of that 384 actually turned out to vote - your looking at about 40%. Of that 122 million 25 million were students - that are not likely to turn out again. Do you think they even know there's a midterm election?
For that we should probably ask Sunshine - he spends all day in the library. What was it two months ago you were ripping on the small businessmen working hard to turn this thing around - now you're ripping on Americans exercising their right to free speech? Not sure where you're headed with that approach either.
Seems all you can do is attack.
yeah, work can get in the way of a lot of things. I got lucky. I work 21 turn shift work, and I happened to finish up midnights that night. the one in Valpo went really well and was a blast, though.
Federalist, 500k is just a number I have seen used several times. And comparing that number to voter turnout is really meaningless. Although it would be valid for an election, we aren't talking about elections, we are talking about how people feel.
BTW, I have enough free time that I could go to a TEA party nearly every day this year. And I still won't go. These parties aren't about deficits or spending. GW was pretty good at creating deficits through spending. This is political bullshit.
I don't like a lot of what Obama is doing. On the other hand I didn't like anything Bush did.
Reub, where I think you're wrong is that you've been drinking from the coolaid cup that the Obama people are passing around.
The Tea Parties had almost nothing to do with Obama, when Rick Santelli first went on his famous rant he was aggravated about the TARP and the Stimulus Bill ... suggesting that regular Americans shouldn't have to bail out poorly managed companies or homeowners.
Tough to disagree with that eh?
The Obama people then castigated all tea party types as "anti-government" or "anti-tax" or worse the evil "pro-gun veteran types"
BigReub - I'll leave it up to Rasmussen to tell me how people feel. If you get 500K (if that's the number) to show up to anything - I'd say its impressive. If they have memory until 2010 that type of motivation would definitely effect the vote.
Hell - I'm not a big fan of Mr. Bush. I thought he trampled on the BOR, and think if you're going to fight a war - make sure you have the $ to pay for it. But still Mr. Obama has almost committed the $5T that Mr. Bush spent in 8 years - and he hasn't even reached the 100 day mark.
So I would say its the speed at which the spending is happening and the fact that there is no turning this off until 2010.
That's an interesting sentiment that you express though.
"I don't like a lot of what Obama is doing. On the other hand I didn't like anything Bush did." It seems a lot of people voted against the GOP, more than for Obama. I'm in a blue town and the party is over right now. People are waking up with hang overs saying -wait, I didn't vote for this. I mean die hard Obama fans before the election are trashing him now. Seems to be reflected in the polls too - Rasmussen has SA among Democrats down 12 pts since the inauguration.
I'll tell you I felt betrayed by Bush. I think a number that feel the same is creating the listlessness of the GOP. I wonder if the same sentiment is growing on the Democrat side toward Obama?
Briefs, no koolaid here. I just question motives. Why no "parties" when GW was spending like mad and calling us un-American for questioning him?
Federalist, I think GW's idiocy handed the job to Obama, but he deserves a chance. He walked into a real shit pot (while GW walked into a pretty good situation, financially).
But as along as we are a two party system this stupidity isn't going to stop. People aren't willing to meet in the middle any more. I want my way and will sit in the corner and pout until I get it - that's most people of power's attitude.
I say abolish two party elections. If 11 people want to run for pres then 11 run. The top two vote getters come out of the primaries and any party affiliation is illegal.
Uh... the financial situation Dubya walked into was NOT good. If we use the same criteria used for dating the current recession to December of '07, the '01 recession really started in September of '00, not March of '01. The NASDAQ crashed in March of '00.
And then there was that little thing that happened in downtown Manhattan. You might have forgotten about that.
As far as spending goes, no one is going to argue that Dubya was right on that. For god's sake, why did Republicans lose Congress in '06? It was because of dissatisfaction on spending!
Conservatives were not happy about NCLB spending, nor the Medicare drug benefit. Those were budget busters.
There's a lot of history revisionism going on here.
BigReub - What choice do we have but to give Obama a chance? Not much we can do about it now. I agree with the disdain for the parties. Read paragraphs 20-26 of G. Washington's farewell address and tell me this isn't the current state of affairs. The scary part is that some of what he says about the influence of foriegn parties is unfolding before our eyes now.
http://www.earlyamerica.com/earlyamerica/milestones/farewell/text.html
Buzz - tell me that the influence of an "often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community" P17, didn't drive GWB policies. C'mon an ammendment to the constitution for marriage? The constitution - really? Spying on U.S. citizens? A patriot act so tight I couldn't even open a saving account for my daughter in 2002?
Granted - Bush had challenges that most presidencies don't have. 9-11, the Iraq War - but he drove the response politically. What was the lesson learned from the surge - oh yeah - if we put adequate resources on a project we see progress. How much $ and lives would have been saved if the war were fought militarily instead of politically? Or for that matter if we finished the job in the first Gulf War? I thought we already learned that lesson from Korea and Vietnam. Some of these executive privileges that GWB put in place will be dangerous in the hands of the Obama administration. There is already some investigation into illegal phone screens.
But BigReub - let's consider the influence of the Clinton administration on the shit pot GWB got. Clinton didn't like the economic formulae so he changed them. Who knows what the unemployment rate is anymore - except that its going up? And lest we forget that it was Clinton that signed the act that let B. Frank and C. Dodd create the mess that Bush is blamed for now. Sorry - thought it was the Bush team that wanted to review FNM and FRE and were blocked by Frank, et al? Mind you - I don't blame Clinton - it could have been a good act if not abused by these guys in congress, but we'll never know now.
So how do you break the cycle of the back and forth between the parties - and the escalating viciousness and polararities resulting? How do we get the right to stop chanting "Un-American" and the left to stop chanting "Tea Freaks?" I don't know if it will every happen - but if it does - I bet it starts with a grassroots movement like what we're seeing now. I hope it gains momentum.
"We have jobs, families...."
Really, so you listen to Rush Limbaugh from 12-3pm (during the workday, by the way)? Why aren't you working on whatever project you should be working on?
And there's a lot of nutjobs at those rallies (lots of youtube clips of their hijinks).
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