Politics with Marc Ambinder

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Nov 6 2009, 6:30 am by Chris Good

Question Of The Day: The GOP And Conservative Grassroots

Tea partiers descended on Capitol Hill yesterday for a rally that drew 10,000 people, and prominent Republicans like Eric Cantor Mike Pence spoke to the crowd. Are grassroots conservatives ready to get behind figures of the Republican establishment, or do GOP politicians still need to approach the tea partiers, and their populist energy, with caution?

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Comments (3)

JLC

You really discredit your magazine and your website by posting the crowd number of 10,000 as fact. Any rational and objective person who follows this knows that the police estimate was 3,000 to 3,500 while crazy Bachmann and Fox are pushing the crowd number to be from 20,000 to as much as 50,000. It blows my mind that you guys have become so casual with facts (and spelling). Are you just full-on entertainment know? Pretty pathetic.

24AheadDotCom

Rather than commenting on how professional politicians should approach the partiers, let me point out what Ambinder won't tell you: the partiers are yet again being useful idiots for those whose policies would raise their taxes and reduce their power. Pence had his own "guest" plan that was connected to Dick Armey and the heir to the Loctite fortune. His plan had no limits on the number of "guests", but simply responded to "market demands". Of course, due to social spending in the U.S., low-wage labor is subsidized, and the partiers would be the ones doing the subsidizing. All those "guests" would also form a power base for the Dems, who would push for higher taxes, and the partiers would be the ones paying that too.

Pineview1997

10,000? Where did that number come from? I've heard no estimates that large.