Weak Tea

I almost hate to write this report on the Mission Viejo Tea Party because I've attended all three years and the past two were pretty darn successful, with crowds estimated at 600 in 2009 and 700 last year.  All four corners of the La Paz/Marguerite Parkway intersection were crowded with people both of those years.  You can compare the pictures from 2009 and 2010 with  what you'll see below.

I arrived on scene about 15 minutes after the scheduled start and shot some photos from across the street:

At that point I had a hard time counting even 100 people on all four corners. Within 30 minutes the crowd had picked up a bit:

There were a couple of good signs that had been pre-made by the organizers:

Frankly, I got bored pretty quickly.  There were some political speeches, some music, some enthusiastic honking from cars going by, but certainly not the excitement and passion of the last two years.  Will there be a 2012 event?  Maybe.  The presidential election might motivate people to get out and march again, especially if the country is still headed down the tank economically.

Now, on to a tricky subject that's probably going to make some people mad.  As I was pulling up to the intersection (before I got out and walked around) the first thing that caught my eye and raised concerns was this:

And it wasn't just me. When my wife arrived awhile later to meet me for dinner the first thing she said was "what's with the Confederate flag?" It was the biggest flag flying at the event and you couldn't miss it.  My first thought was it was an anti-Tea Party plant trying to discredit the event.  Sadly, it wasn't.

The Tea Party at a national level has been fighting the "racism" label since it starting in 2009. It's been very convenient for the liberals to tar the Tea Party with the "racism" label even though there was no evidence that it was true.  The left has tried to make it a given that opposition to Obama has to be based on racism and not policy.

I understand the whole Southern pride thing with the Stars and Bars, but waving that flag, even with the "In God We Trust" message on it, is just asking to fire up the "racism" issue again. Mission Viejo is nowhere near the Deep South where that flag is revered, so I'm having a hard time understanding why it was thought appropriate today.

Had I been one of the organizers I would have asked the individual to put it away. Among independents and even some Republicans who were driving by, that flag could easily have given them the wrong impression of what the Tea Party is all about. And for Democrats, it just confirmed the biases they already had.  It was a major strategic error on the part of the rally organizers and you can pretty much be sure that any pictures of this event in the mainstream press will include that flag.

All in all, a very disappointing event.

UPDATE:  OCRegister covers the same event but the Confederate flag doesn't show up anywhere in the photo essay.  Don't know how they could have missed that.

Other coverage from the Mission Viejo Patch (which includes an angry comment about the flag) and Mission Viejo Dispatch which doesn't mention it.