....more than 4,000 people attended the Orlando Tea Party, a conservative rally aimed at expressing discontent with Washington.
"This is maybe the greatest single gathering of God-fearing patriots in the history of Orlando, Florida," local conservative radio host Bud Hedinger, who emceed the event, told the crowd.
The attendees, many of whom said they'd heard about the rally on Hedinger's radio show, brandished flags and homemade signs bearing slogans such as "Repeal the pork or our bacon is cooked" and "Obama lied, liberty died."
"We're really scared about what's happening in our country," said [name withheld], 71, of Largo in Pinellas County. She waved a sign that read "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money" on one side, and "You can't blame Bush anymore" on the other.
Her feelings were shared by Lisa Feroli, one of the event's organizers, who said that a similar fear motivated her to e-mail Hedinger with the idea for the Orlando Tea Party.Helen Eckinger | Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer
Orlando 'Tea Party' rally draws more than 4,000
March 22, 2009
Bud Hedinger used to be an Orlando newsman. He worked for Channels 9 and 18 news, and used to bring a weekly Paul Harvey-like news story to Real Radio's Philips Phile. Now that Hedinger works for AM 540, Orlando's Rush Limbaugh station, he has shown his true stripes: stars and bars.
Republican radio host Bud Hedinger has been a vocal admirer of General Robert E. Lee, who forsook his duty to the United States to side with the attackers of Fort Sumter. Hedinger is also a member of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptists are the only major Christian denomination that still retains the word "Southern" in their church name and have been dubbed by former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips as
the church of the Confederacy.
The historical precedent for this
TEA party is not a patriotic one. After little more than 25 years as a state, Florida left the Union from January 10, 1861 until June 25, 1868, in opposition to President Lincoln. We can only hope that President Obama will become another Lincoln or Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But the cult of Hedinger is opposing Obama nonetheless.
Because Bud Hedinger is a paid Republican propagandist, he must be identified by name. But I withheld the name of the brainwashed 71-year old from Pinellas County because she probably doesn't know any better. Obviously, any retired person who sits at home collecting her social security check while listening to AM radio hosts who decry the program that is helping her to survive is not competent to stand trial.
That deceived lady was but one of 4,000+ cult-of-Hedinger protesters, who decided to protest only after we have finally rid ourselves of King George II. The eight years of George W. Bush featured open violations of Article VI, Amendment IV, Amendment VII, and Amendment XIV of The U.S. Constitution. (Samuel Adams must be spinning in his grave!) If they had any knowledge of
history they would have better dubbed themselves as another "Whiskey Rebellion," which occurred in opposition to George Washington in 1794. But then if they had any knowledge of history they would know that President Obama's stimulus package is really a relief package. States and individuals need relief because we are facing the Second Republican Great Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used similar spending to get us through the first one, and FDR's regulatory policies steered us clear from another panic until the Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush (yes, Clinton too) deregulatory policies paved the way for this one.
Socialism is characterized by "government ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods" (Webster). President Obama has appointed Wall-Street types to his administration and lectured at
The University of Chicago. Clearly, Obama is not a socialist to a fault. The most "socialist" thing Obama wants to do is raise the top marginal tax rate back to that of the Clinton-era,
near-40%. That hardly makes him Eugene V. Debs or Norman Thomas,
much-less Lenin or Marx.
The notion that we "can't blame Bush anymore" is utterly without merit. Thanks to his father's buddy's on the Supreme Court, George W. Bush usurped the presidency in 2000. According to the popular vote, the American people never wanted Bush to be president in the first place. He and Reagan ran up over 50% of the current $10 trillion dollars of the U.S. National Debt. Government spending must by necessity increase during times of recession, so Obama is doing the right thing now. The debt should be paid down during times of prosperity the way President Clinton did and President's Bush-Reagan failed to do. These protesters are too late and misdirected at best.
Not only did Republicans seize the Presidency for eight years contrary to the will of the people, they practiced a scorched-earth policy on the U.S. government to leave their successor in a real pickle. So, can we really blame Bush for our current economic woes? I answer with a resounding:
