Last Saturday saw two events in Metro Atlanta intended to swell the momentum of the Teabaggers/GOP's anti-public health crusade. You hadn't heard about them? Guess why.
The day started when I and a friend attended Representative David Scott's Health Care townhall. Scott, you may recall, became the object of media attention when a video of his heated exchange with an anti-reform disruptor was posted on youtube, making him a whipping boy for teabaggers nation wide. This was followed by the sign outside his district office being defaced by a spray painted swastika. (note: the African American Congressman's office is located in Cobb County, an area with a long history as a locus of white Supremacy activity in the state.}
Given these events, there was concern that his town hall might be swamped by teabaggers. Local health care reform advocates had mobilized to insure that this would not go unopposed. So Rosa and I drove to Jonesboro, a town south of Atlanta and site of the Civil War battle that had sealed the fate of the city and the Confederacy, where the town hall was to be held at a local High School.
Finding the location proved a bit of challenge but with the help of directions provided by a middle eastern gentleman clerking at a local store, we finally arrived.
The event drew an estimated 600 participants and yes, the teabaggers turned out. But we were heartened to discover that the mobilization of reform advocates had more than matched their numbers. This plus heighten security provided by local police insured that the town hall came off without any significant disruptions. Although there were some spirited exchanges of boos and cheers between the two sides, any attempt to impose the teabagger's frame on the story had to be ranked as a fail.
Health care reform advocates-1. Teabaggers-0.
From Jonesboro we rolled back to Atlanta where a much ballyhooed mega rally of teabaggers was scheduled for Centenial Olympic Park in the heart of downtown. They irony of choosing this location for public diswplay of wingnuttery was hard to miss. It was at Centenial Park that right wing domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph inaugurated his campaign of murder and mayhem by setting off a bomb during the Atlanta Olympics.
The rally had been heavily promoted by local right wing talk show host and former GOP candidate Herman Cain. Cain, a wealthy former CEO, has the distinction of being the most high profile African American in the Georgia GOP. He was a featured speaker at the event along with such past luminaries of the right as Dick Armey and Ralph Reed joined by such hopefuls as current Secretary of State, Karen Handel, State Rep. Eric Johnson and Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, all stalwarts of the GOP right and all running for Governor. With such promotion and presumed heavy hitters on the bill, it seemed likely that the rally would be large.
I arrived at the park shortly after the 2pm start time. Looking down across the grassy expanse leading to the speaker's platform I could see what looked to be a largish crowd clustered before it. Having had some experience at crowd estimates I wasn't very impressed. Still it was early and I fully expected the crowd would swell as the rally progressed.
I passed through one of two entry points where policemen were posted and where volunteers examined bags that were being carried by attendees. I had a band embellished with American flags snapped on to my wrist by a volunteer and then ran a gantlet of campaign workers handing out literature. Handel's flier was the splashiest. A slick color close up of a foreboding President O'bama emblazoned with the headline: "JOIN KAREN'S FIGHT STOP BARACK OBAMA'S POWER GRAB. Below this it claimed "Barack Obama thinks that non-citizens should be allowed to vote in Georgia." Handel made her chops by being the spear carrier for the Georgia GOP's Voter ID law, so it's no surprise that she would exploit this tact. The flier also attempted to play the gender card by stressing that Handel isn't one of the "good old boy" republicans.
The literature for Oxendine and Johnson was pretty tame in comparison. The usual threadbare stuff about "strong conservative values", "taxes", etc.
As I made my way to the far end of the park, it became apparent that the crowd was even sparser than I'd first imagined. What from a distance had appeared to be a solid mass turned out on closer inspection to be clusters of people separated by large gaps. It seemed to me that that there couldn't have been more than 2500 to 3000 people in attendance. Still, the afternoon was young.
It hardly seems worthwhile to describe the crowd. It was pretty much the usual Teabagger/GOP/"Libertarian" gaggle. Overwhelmingly if not entirely white, middle aged and above sprinkled with a few families. Plenty of signs denouncing Obama as a dictator, reform as Socialism and dire warnings that reform would mean pulling the plug on grandma.
The first signal that things weren't going as well as the organizers had hoped came when the fellow emceeing the event spent several minutes talking about how wonderful the turnout was dispite the heat, which was murderous, before introducing the speakers.
I won't bore you by regurgitating all the boilerplate. Again it was the usual cant and rhetoric. Assuring the crowd that they were the true patriots, that they were the beginning of a revolution, that they would take back "their" country, etc. Worthy of note though, was Dick Armey's avowel that if the Teabaggers were terrorists, he was proud to be with them. Pretty loose talk, considering where he was speaking. Also interesting was the distinctly unenthusiastic reception that greeted Ralph Reed, the tarnished golden boy and soiled angel of the religious right. One had to wonder whose idea it had been to invite him.
By the time Herman Cain was spoke it was pretty clear that there wasn't going to be a sudden surge in attendance, The crowd had grown some but I thought 5000 was a generous estimate. I decided to call it a day.
Sunday's Atlanta Journal Constitution gave front page coverage to both events but it wasn't the lead story. The papers take was factual although they spun it as " Civil disagreements in Jonesboro; Thousands rally in Centennial Park." However, inside the story came the real kicker. While the rally organizers claimed that they had "handed out 12,000 wristbands" the Atlanta Police blandy estimated the attendance as no more than 3000.
Far be it from me to dispute the APD assessment but I do think this is a little low. However, the claim of 12,000 is a patently bogus, face saving fabrication on the part of the organizers.
This rally was supposed to be a show of strength by the teabaggers and anti-reform forces. It was intended to put to rest the suggestion that the town hall disruptions were a ginned up, ideologically driven, partisan operation by demonstrating the breadth and depth of the "movement". The irony is that they failed in the former by succeeding in the latter. Here in the deep red, deep south, with free publicity provided both by the largest radio broadcaster in the state and the GOP's various constituent networks, they couldn't bring out even half of the numbers they claim.
This pathetic flop demonstrates the breadth and depth of the "movement" all right.
Health care reform advocates-2. Teabaggers-0.