Tea Party 2010 Observations

The 2010 Tea Party in Sacramento was smaller than last year. The crowd seemed older and less enthusiastic. The worst aspect of the gathering was the sound system. The audio had so much echo that it was unintelligible from the sides and hard to understand when in front of the stage. In four hours of attending the program, I never heard a single speaker. Only fragments could be understood.

It was nice to see many political folks that I know both past and present.

Signs were varied and most were homemade. Several had spelling errors that were unintentional. Some signs were clever. I wrote down a few examples of signs at the event.

Please don’t tell Obama what comes after a trillion.

November Cometh.

You can’t fix stupid, but you can vote it out of office.

Taxed Enough Already.

2010 end of an error.

Term Limits: change we can believe in.

My biggest complaint about the Tea Party is the seeming lack of focus and direction. My imaginary conversation with the Tea Party would go like this:
Me: OK, we don’t like taxes but what will we do?
TP: Vote.
ME: Good, but what else?
TP: Organize.
ME: To do what?
TP (Awkward silence followed by clearing throat): …

At Tea Parties you will hear that incumbents are bad, Republicans aren’t any better, let’s get back to the Constitution; however, at the end of the day the Tea Party mandate gets fuzzy.