Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally held at the Lincoln Memorial inspired an estimated 300,000 people from across the country to come to Washington. Attendees donated slightly more than $5 million for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. Despite the distinctly spiritual overtones to the event, however, much of the coverage focused on opposition expressed by speakers and attendees to President Obama’s political and economic agenda. But the most important message from this event was likely aimed at congressional Republicans and it was anything but otherworldly: The voters are watching and they aren’t going to settle for mere promises.
The GOP must remember that the Tea Party movement started barely a month into Obama’s term, mere days following the passage of the $862 billion economic stimulus package. The protests were sparked in great part by CNBC’s Rick Santelli with his on-air protest of Washington’s growing list of taxpayer-funded bailouts of politically connected corporations such as insurance giant AIG. As he stood on the trading floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange, Santelli called for a “Chicago Tea Party,” which elicited a cheer from the traders and resolve by citizen activists across the country. But the movement was not then and is not today simply a response to Obama: It’s a bipartisan protest that includes dismay over the bailouts of President George W. Bush and the big spending by the Republican congressional majority before 2006.
