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

Posted Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 10:51 am

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.

Tags: 
ed morrissey
hotair
arnold schwarzenegger
glenn reynolds
john and ken
tea parties

Comments

Fred Dawes (not verified)

Sun, 03/08/2009 - 18:46

No matter what we do this low life government will have its third world monkeys here, it will do what it wants to you after it has its mass numbers and the political race weight of evil force this government has already started its dehumanizing of whites and it fact this evil act by our enemies has been going on for many years. this government is working to make mass upheavals inside this nation to remove the people who made it great and ask who is doing this evil against us all. the question we must ask and act on when the time is right is in front of us all. if we open our eyes you will see the facts but people will never do that and most will keep his or her eyes closed until the sledge hammer hits the head and the eyes of that person are closed for all times. don't be the new jew fight back as one person.

Leave it to Beaner (not verified)

Tue, 03/10/2009 - 04:12

At least they [John & Ken] are pro American. And I cant find one single thing wrong with that. As a matter of fact we need politicians to think the same way......yeah right!