So the Tea Party, which isn’t even popular among Republicans, who aren’t popular among Americans in general, and are only marginally less unpopular than the Tea Party, thought they could bring the unwashed masses down on DC and force President Obama to step down so they could arrest him, try members of his administration, and appoint a junta to run the country in accordance with the Constitution, because, you know, the Constitution allows for the appointment of juntas by rebellious groups.
Some of them hoped for violence. Organizer Harry Riley predicted in December, “[I]t will be painful, and some people may die because the government will not be non-violent; some of us will end up in a cell, and some may be injured,” In January, he promised that at least 10 million people would show up.
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It didn’t turn out so well. A few dozen people. Right Wing Watch counted a hundred, quipping that the claim of 10 million was off by just 10 million. We liberals all knew this movement would fizzle out like all the others, that it would have the impact of a KKK rally or a Nazi march through the suburbs of Chicago. A few desultory jeers and the revolution is over. Their claims to represent the will of the American people seem proven to be a little off. They call themselves patriots, but the Founding Fathers’ generation had just a little more get up and go.
Ari Zed tweeted,
Well, no use denying it, we’ve all been hoping for that moment to come.
He also has a nice list of excuses why nobody showed up if you need a chuckle this morning. My mother taught me to never laugh at crazy people, but sometimes you can’t help yourself.
Despite the laughably pathetic attendance, Jim Garrow, another organizer of the would-be coup, who has previously said Obama should be stood against the wall and shot, worried that, as Brian Tashman writes at RWW, that “President Obama would shut down access to Washington Area Traffic Camera Feeds so people wouldn’t see the masses descending on the capital.” I suspect Garrow was really hoping those feeds would shut down so nobody would see the trickle of lunatics lolling about the mall wishing Obama would go away.
It turns out, if images weren’t appearing it was because organizers weren’t posting them out of embarrassment.
Oh dear.
But never fear. The lunatics are not going away. They are gathering again in Michigan right now, with The Freedom Summit: Prepare to Govern!, which is hosted by, you guessed it, Jim Garrow.
Also present will be Kerry Bentivolio, a Republican congressman who thinks Obama should be killed for treason and retired general Paul Vallely, who thinks military coups are as constitutional as tea party coups. Other right wing lunatics will be present as well, enough so that an untimely outbreak of Ebola – or maybe just severe food poisoning – would pretty much end America’s problem with mass-uprising fantasists.
Keep in mind this is an election year. Republicans are less popular than ever before. The Democrats have some really good candidates out there, sensible candidates who care about Americans. The Republicans…well, not so much. Lunatics mostly, each trying to outdo the other with their lunacy. The Republican Party, which has gone collectively insane, seems to think Americans want this sort of thing. They don’t seem to realize “this sort of thing” wedded to their refusal to govern even when they get the opportunity, might be making them a wee bit less popular than Democrats.
And it’s not like you can say the establishment Republicans are any better than the Tea Party type. After all, they have Karl Rove, who said Hilary spent 30 days in the hospital when she spent 3, and that despite having faked her accident she somehow suffered brain damage from a fall she never took. There are plenty of voters who don’t pay attention, but c’mon. We do have video tape. We do have Internet, and if the mainstream media will suffer from collective amnesia, blogs like this will not. We remember. We will make sure everybody who opens their eyes and ears will remember and realize that you cannot say one thing and then another and expect them both to be accepted as true.
OAS photos by Brain Tashman at RWW.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
