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NH (Koch) Tea Party Fail

by: Zandra Rice Hawkins

Fri Apr 15, 2011 at 19:32:38 PM EDT


(Lindner "A movement manufactured by television hosts and oil tycoons two years ago is not historic" - promoted by Mike Hoefer)

Today's "Taxpayer Tea Party Rally at the Statehouse" might have been more impressive if it hadn't oversold itself early in the week, touting Fox News attendance and making bold predictions about turnout numbers.

The Koch brothers sponsored group and rally planners (funders) Americans for Prosperity sent this to my inbox this week:

Due to the increased interest from the media and the high volume of attendees expected, AFP-New Hampshire has set up an RSVP system to ensure an accurate crowd count can be determined ... This may be the largest Taxpayer Tea Party Rally in New Hampshire history. You don't want to miss it!

In the email and again during the rally today, the AFP staff asked people to send a text to the designated number for an "accurate count" to counter the low numbers they predicted to be reported by the "liberal media". It'll be interesting to see what numbers they decide to report, given the decidedly low energy and the even bigger contrast to that other large rally on the State House lawn a few weeks ago ... pictures anyone?

The "potentially largest Taxpayer Tea Party Rally in NH history", organized by Koch-funded AFP and featuring several GOP Presidential Candidates like TPaw, Santorum, etc.; est. crowd ~300:

Rally for New Hampshire, organized by a loose-knit coalition of organizations and individuals concerned about protecting essential services and workers rights; est. crowd ~5,000:

Lest the ground-shot vs aerial view gives too much credit in the first photo, pay particular attention to the statues. At the Rally for NH, it was midpoint. Today, the #teafail loosely spread to it as a perimeter.

Outside the State House lawn there was a counter-organizing effort by area students. Good story on that here.

Zandra Rice Hawkins :: NH (Koch) Tea Party Fail
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NH (Koch) Tea Party Fail | 18 comments
to be fair (4.00 / 2)
this might well have been the largest Teabagger rally in NH history.  

A movement manufactured by television hosts and oil tycoons two years ago is not historic. (4.00 / 3)


--
Hope > Anarch-tea
Twitter: @DougLindner


[ Parent ]
it wasn't even that (0.00 / 0)
The NH Tea Partiers have had somewhat bigger turnouts in the past.  

[ Parent ]
NH is on the verge of losing jobs (0.00 / 0)
We are on the verge of losing jobs on the local, county and state level all across NH.  People are waking up and realizing that the Tea Party/Koch Bro production here in NH was not what voters thought is really was.  

I guess they decided to bag it n/t (4.00 / 5)


note to close readers: this might be sarcastic so think twice before reading to candidates for use in their attacks on each other

Steve Vaillancourt (0.00 / 0)
attempts to make a silk purse out of pig excrement (he likes to bit more of a challenge than just starting with sow's ears).  
As a woman, I would remind him that men do get breast cancer, and those bumps on his hairy chest (I'm sure he's a very manly man with lots of hair) are nipples.

Numbers (4.00 / 4)
Let's keep in mind that over 1.5 million people were on the DC mall for Obama's inauguration.

The best I've heard of any TP turnout in the same locale was 10s of thousands.

Between 4000 and 5000 people rallied on the NH State House lawn to protest the O'Brien and TP budget.

A couple hundred TPers show up for a NH State House gathering, complete with Pres candidates.

I've said all along that the TPers are getting press coverage way out of proportion to their numbers.

JillSH


I was on the mall for the inauguration (0.00 / 0)
I got lucky, but can attest many thousands of people (including occasional BHer nh ex-pat) were sent away from the ceremony because the entire Mall--a 2.5 mile long national park that stretches from the Capitol past the Washington Monument, White House, and WWII Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial--was at capacity. And it was so tight that when my part of the crowd moved, there was no room for anybody to trip and fall, because we were packed in.

When I saw then-Senator Obama speak at Veterans Park in Manchester back in September 08, it was the biggest crowd I'd ever seen for anything in this state. I remember being told it was 7,000 to 10,000.

At those events--UNLIKE every tea protest you've ever seen breathlessly covered live on television--there was not room in the crowds for lawn chairs or beach towels.

--
Hope > Anarch-tea
Twitter: @DougLindner


[ Parent ]
Ovide borrowed a book from a socialist library! (4.00 / 5)
Ovide LaMontagne gave a fiery speech where he contrasted the Constitution (a little pamphlet) with the US Internal Revenue Code (a thick book.)  He threw the tax code book in the trash at the climax of his speech.

Ovide Lamontagne in Concord

Here's the ironic part: his copy of the tax code was a library book, borrowed from a socialist library.  If you zoom in close, you can see a Library of Congress number on the white sticker on the spine. I hope he recovered the book from the trash can.  Failing that, he should pay to replace it.  

I thought I heard him say the tax code was 4,000-something pages long.  That volume which he borrowed from the library was not thick enough to be 4000 pages long: it is probably 1200 or so pages long, maybe 1500 if it is printed on onion-skin paper.


Ovide... (4.00 / 3)
has not changed one bit. He is still an ass!

[ Parent ]
Page counts (0.00 / 0)
Most official laws / bills are printed double-spaced, with wide margins, and copious footnotes. A "1000 page bill" would be perhaps 350 pages long if printed like a novel.

Most of the people who use page counts for dramatic effect know this. They don't mind misleading their audience.


[ Parent ]
If teabaggers actually Read The Bills themselves, (0.00 / 0)
They'd likely see the pdfs that show how misleading those page counts are.

--
Hope > Anarch-tea
Twitter: @DougLindner


[ Parent ]
Shouldn't these (4.00 / 4)
liberty lovin', free market worshippin', Teabaglitarians have their rally on private property, instead of suckling at the public teat?  

How abaout Keene today? (0.00 / 0)
Were the numbers as pathetic?

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.  (John Morley, 1838-1923)

How Many? (0.00 / 0)
It doesn't matter how many are there
THE TEA PARTY IDIOTS ARE FOLK THAT CAN'T OR WON'T DO MATH
They will believe what ever their "leaders" TELL THEM-----THEY ALL KNOW THE MEDIA LIES!

Plymouth (4.00 / 1)
Nice story in The Clock at PSU on how the activist students kept up the fight in their own back yard after their counter-rally in Concord earlier on Friday. The TP tricorn hootenanny Plymouth edition included Guida; one supposes that was the biggest name they could draw.

Note one student's report of how they were told to

close their "dirty hippie mouths" and "buy their own condoms," by Tea Partiers down in Concord.

Typical. That will really improve their image with the youth that they hate so much.

They. Don't. Care.
We do.
Rinse, repeat.


OUCH! (4.00 / 2)
Reuters:

Four potential Republican presidential hopefuls showed up, but the turnout for the New Hampshire Tea Party tax day rally was rather tepid.

On a brilliant spring day in Concord, perfect for a rally, only about 300 came to protest taxes and the Obama Administration, a far cry from the robust rallies held ahead of the 2010 elections.

...Local attendees noted that the gathering was about one-tenth the size of a recent rally in support of public sector unions that packed the green in front of the State House.

That sure put's DJ's overheard comment that the showing was "awful" into context.

birch paper; on Twitter @deanbarker


Certainly understandable (4.00 / 1)
they were probably all at home trying to figure out their 1040EZ forms...

They. Don't. Care.
We do.
Rinse, repeat.


[ Parent ]
NH (Koch) Tea Party Fail | 18 comments

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