"Fullerton Tea Party" was not a "tea party", don't be fooled

Yesterday, radio hosts John and Ken from KFI in Los Angeles held a "tea party" in Fullerton (Orange County) that was attended by somewhere between 8,000 and 15,000 people. Despite what you'll hear from the usual suspects, this wasn't one of the classic tea parties in the Ayn Rand/"taxation is theft"/"greed is good" sense. Instead, it was based on something that John and Ken had been pushing before the "tea parties" started and it was mostly a protest of local California issues relating to Arnold Schwarzenegger. They glommed on to the "tea party" idea and did feature some discussion about the stimulus plan, and now those behind the "tea parties" are trying to pretend it's indicative of some massive movement when it isn't.

Those misleading about this include (of course) Glenn Reynolds (pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/72439, pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/72434) and Ed Morrissey of HotAir (hotair.com/archives/2009/03/08/fullerton-tea-party-gets-15000-protestors).

There's a running commentary on the event here and a news report here.

UPDATE: There's video from the rally here. And, Insty doubles-down at the first of his links above:

A reader emails: "I'm just wondering if 8-15 thousand at Fullerton is enough for doom sayers like Rick Moran and others to deign to join in."

Another reader (this one named) says:

John and Ken by the way are not Republican by any stretch of the imagination or even conservative. They are very much a “pox on both your houses.” The success of their rally makes me wonder why conservative talk show hosts are not pushing this more. If a local station can get 8 -15,000 people imagine what Hugh Hewitt or Sean Hannity could pull off, never mind Rush Limbaugh.

I doubt whether Rush or the rest would want to be associated with the loony libertarian subtext of these protests. If they held their own rallies, they wouldn't have that same subtext; i.e., they'd be as different from the Instapundit-style rallies as the J&K one was. If those hosts held their own rallies it would be more difficult for Insty to mislead about them, not that he probably wouldn't try.

UPDATE 2: There are more videos here, here, here, here, and here.

Sun, 03/08/2009 - 10:51 · · Importance: 4