Des Moines Tea Party

Chad and I made it over to the front lawn of the Iowa State Capitol for the Des Moines Tea Party. Pretty good crowd. Chad estimated maybe 3000. I thought maybe 2000 to 2500. KCCI, citing the Iowa State Patrol, agreed with Chad. The Des Moines Register, of course, came up with a much lower number.

Chad and I rolled in about 11:30 AM. We walked the last couple blocks up to the Capitol with a nice guy who was wearing a tie-dye shirt, a macrame knit cap, and carrying a guitar. He stated that he didn't understand why people of the right would be called totalitarians or fascists when we wanted less government. I had to agree with that. He indicated that he wouldn't mind living out of a bus that ran on bio-diesel so that he wouldn't have to use any money for rent or utilities. While I would wish him the best of luck, I'm not entirely convinced that I could make that work.

The crowd was large and well-behaved. As we walked up, they were introducing a new speaker, an elderly gentleman who spoke mostly about abortion, though he did get some points in about lower taxes. To my mind, the crowd was receptive and in agreement, but no really getting into his talk.

The next gentleman spoke with a bit of a drawl and was more on point with the tenor of the crowd. He was four-square behind lower taxes and not over-burdening future generations through government debt. I thought he got several more applause lines than the earlier speaker.

We took a moment to sing America the Beautiful. And then had a woman from a local relgious AM radio station. She too spoke mostly about social issues, but got her best applause lines when she ventured into low taxes.

The fourt speaker was introduced as a pastor's wife and small business owner. She focused almost entirely on the small business angle and how taxes thwart the growth of small businesses.

By this time, it was about 12:30 and a return to work beckoned. We ran into one of Chad's neighbors who described the crowd as, "A lot of disaffected conservatives and libertarians, a lot of Ron Paul supporters, and a few black helicopter types." That seemed about right to me.

I did take two or three pictures. And if I can figure out how to get them uploaded on here, I'll do so.

Update: Photos

Here's sort of a distance picture. It's kind of hard to see everyone because they are curving downhill and away from where Chad and I were standing.



Then for these next three I zoomed and took three shots panning from my left to right.