The following report was emailed to me by someone who attended the "TEA Party" in Danville yesterday. I thought it was worth sharing (bolding added by me for emphasis).
I was there. I wasn't sure where the place was, but once I got to Danville I rolled down the windows and followed the crazy. [State Sen. Robert] Hurt [who has announced he is running for the 5th CD Republican nomination] didn't say anything particularly crazy, but Virgil [Goode] sure did. Apparently the media drastically underestimated the size of the tea party crowd in DC a few weeks ago--Virgil knows because he has a neighbor who is an "excellent crowd estimator" based on "prior experience," and he said the crowd was between 1.2 and 1.5 million. Therefore, disregard whatever the media said.
[Republican 5th CD Candidate Laurence] Verga was there too, speaking the same voodoo economics we're used to hearing from their camp. When one of the old guys asked why we don't have tariffs on companies that ship jobs overseas, Verga said we should be cutting the corporate tax rate instead. That was his answer to everything, including how to reduce the debt. Oh, and the Fair Tax will bring "millions of new jobs" back to the US for that very reason.
Their leader I think is a guy named Nigel Coleman. He wore a colonial uniform complete with tri-cornered hat and they dedicated their "freedom pole" so all the patriots knew where to meet in the city of Danville. What a long-winded jackass. There was a musician who sang an anti-Obama song, and also he sang a song talking about revolution in the streets; which was ironic, because when he was introduced, the organizers lamented how in Vietnam there weren't any songs like "Over There" or "Remember Pearl Harbor," but rather everything turned into "hippie music."
Naturally, they held their anti-tax, anti-government rally on a publicly-funded courthouse plaza. Also, they're going to send Tom back to Albemarle County, but they're also going to send him back to New York. Nigel said both things at different times. Apparently Tom's from both places. Nigel also pointed out that when he asks Democrats why they don't go live in Cuba if universal health care is so great, none of us actually go to live there. I could go on and on, but it was a mess of insanity, contradictions and overall just an exercise in the surreal.
The only ideological coherence they have is anger and hyperbole. Hurt didn't delve into any attacks and kept it pretty civil, but I think it says a lot that he thinks he has to court this demographic.
The purpose of Blue Virginia is to cover Virginia politics from a progressive and Democratic perspective. This is a group blog, founded by me (Lowell Feld), but now including several other progressive writers. I can't speak for the other "front pagers," but I consider myself a progressive in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, JFK, RFK and actually a bunch of progressive Republicans (e.g., Jacob Javits, Lowell Weicker). As such, I believe in expanding opportunities to all, utilizing government as a tool to promote the general welfare and the common good, protecting the environment for ourselves and for future generations, and expanding the rights promised in our Constitution and Bill of Rights to all Americans.
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The following report was emailed to me by someone who attended the "TEA Party" in Danville yesterday. I thought it was worth sharing (bolding added by me for emphasis).
