Has the Tea party movement burned itself out, save for all but the most fanatical types? It’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions from the attendance of just one (very) poorly populated event, but when the event in question is in Florida and they can’t even find the requisite number of cranky, dumb old Republicans to fill the seats for something called the “Save America Convention,” you can’t really help but wonder if something’s gone seriously off the boil:
With Fox News host Glenn Beck’s ratings down and the biggest tea party rally eclipsed by a recent pro-labor rally in Wisconsin, could the tea party be losing steam? One new sign: a big tea party convention in Tampa, FL this weekend — headlined by such conservative favorites as Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Fox News Judge Andrew Napolitano, and former GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo — attracted only about 300 people. The Save America Convention’s website lists 25 guest speakers, meaning there was one speaker for every 12 attendees. If one includes the 13 musicians and other performers listed as entertainment, that ratio drops to one for every 7 and a half.
Joseph Farah, the founder of the birther news website World Net Daily, who spoke at the event, promised “lots of opportunities for interactivity between participants and presenters.” Indeed, this photo from the convention posted by Saint Petersblog suggests attendees would have little competition to meet Farah and the other speakers’
Aimed at the farthest right of the far right, the three-day event touted a sponsorship from the John Birch Society and an appearance by Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia. But this kind of uber-conservative fare has had no trouble attracting bigger crowds not long ago. There’s no video of the event — which didn’t include a single female speaker — since “video recorders and audio rendering devices are prohibited and would be grounds for removal without refund.”
Probably because they desperately didn’t want images like the above pic getting out. A videotape would only have made this wingnut micro-gathering seem even more pathetic. If a picture paints a thousand words, what would you title this one?
Via Think Progress