After stoking the flames under Tea Partying anger for a year and a half, Glenn Beck is now urging his radio audience to cool it. In his own words: "Hang up the Statue of Liberty costume...(and) leave it in the closet. Don't bring your signs anymore." It's an unabashed attempt to not "appear to be...a bunch of, you know, crazy" people.
Either Beck's messages haven't penetrated northern Florida or they fell on deaf ears. On Saturday, Tea Party groups from 11 northeast Florida counties assembled for a four-hour "Forward with the Constitution Rally" in historic St. Augustine's Francis Field for what the St. Petersburg Times-Herald called "far and away the largest event of the 2010 campaign season in Florida."
Defiant "Don't Tread On Me" flags were ubiquitous. People strolled about in period costumes, including two dressed as Revolutionary War valiants. One man dragged a large wooden cross about the grounds. (It was unclear whether he was repenting some transgression or lamenting some impending doom.)
Signs abounded. So did T-shirts decrying "Obama's Mosque" and the usual suspects, taxes and big, socialized government. One booth sold T-shirts emblazoned with the familiar red-white-and-blue Obama "O" logo in three styles: "OOPS!," "LOL," and "OWTF?" Beck would certainly disapprove.
The Tea Party's image of old was in no danger of cracking. Here's a sample of some of what was said:
Senatorial candidate Marco Rubio, Tea Party favorite: "This election is nothing less than a referendum on our identity as a nation and as a people." This year, he said, people are "pushed to the brink."
Gubernatorial candidate Rick Scott: "The government kills jobs through regulation ... through fees.... They're going to kill a lot of jobs through Obamacare."
Attorney General candidate Pam Bondi: "We have a liberal president, a liberal speaker, our debt is out of control ...and Obama and Pelosi are out of control. We're going to fight to take our state back.... (From what?) Fox News isn't 'fair and balanced,' they're right." (Bondi is a Fox News analyst in Tampa.)
There were booths and signs and flags a-plenty for Republican candidates Rubio, Scott, Bondi and U.S. Rep. John Mica, and even for the Libertarian Party's U.S. Senate candidate, Alexander Snitker. Not everyone was welcomed by Tea Party freedom-lovers, however.
Bernie DeCastro, Senate candidate from the Constitution Party of Florida, for one, was stopped at the gate. "They asked why they couldn't enter," recalled Bill McCormick, State Committeeman for the St. Johns County Democratic Party, who was standing nearby. Police explained that the organizers had a permit to use the public park for a "private party," so they could exclude anyone they wanted to for whatever reason. DeCastro was allowed in, but his sign-bearing aides had to wait outside.
McCormick was wearing a T-shirt and distributing literature to promote a state constitutional amendment. He and others in his group were also denied admission.
"Toward the end of my stay," McCormick recalled, "at about 12:30 p.m., after Rubio spoke, another guy, wearing an identical T-shirt (to his) but turned inside out," said he'd been stopped inside the gates and "threatened" until he "ran out" in fear.
Crowd estimates ranged wildly. The St. Augustine Record reported an estimate of 5,000 on the "hot and breezy" field. Bloggers on the newspaper's web site had a field day debating that number. Some put it at between 500 and 1,000. Others insisted it was multiples more because people kept drifting in and out and clustering inside every patch of shade on the field's periphery.
On-site observers, including McCormick, said it was "more than 1,000, but closer to 1,000 than 2,000" at the height of the program, by all accounts during Rubio's noon address.
McCormick also estimates that seven to ten percent of those attending were observers, not active participants. "A number of people were milling around...but did not respond to the speakers, even when some members of the crowd were wildly enthusiastic," confirmed Nell Toensmann, St. Johns County Democratic Party Secretary, including "a number of Democrats...trying to understand the mentality of the participants."
A version of this blog is cross-posted at www.jrbarras.com
