Charleston Tea Party

My wife and I just got home from the Charleston Tea Party and what a Tea Party it was!  Our CONSERVATIVE governor, Mark Sanford was there and spoke for about six minutes.  I don’t have an official count but I estimate we had a couple thousand people gathered at the Customs House at Market and East Bay and it was awesome.

I took a lot of photos, particularly of signs and I tried to show some idea of the size of the crowd.  That turned out to be difficult because I was never able to get into an elevated position.  Hopefully you’ll get some idea from the various views.

All in all it was an inspiring event and I was impressed at how well behaved the crowd was.  Mary Katherine Hamm sent a tweet while we were there saying “I was ready to report craziness if I saw it.  There was NONE.  Not one rude sticker or t-shirt or errant word.”  That’s exactly what I observed in Charleston.  There was a strong spirit of patriotism, of love for this country and fear that we are on the road to losing it all.

There were a lot of speakers, mostly local people that most of the crowd didn’t know.  They were speaking because they care about this country.  Most all were inspiring.  We heard from a trucker, a builder, a 17 year old student and many more, all there with a common purpose, to let our elected officials know we are very unhappy with the direction this country is going.

It will be interesting to see if the liberals continue to try to marginalize what took place today.  I’ve heard numerous pundits on the left saying this all amounts to nothing but from what I can determine, perhaps more than a million people went to Tea Parties today.  As much as the left would like to portray otherwise, they are hard pressed to mount anything like this.

Of note was the number of FairTax supporters at the Tea Party.  My wife and I had on our FairTax shirts and hats and we were in good company.  The FairTax presence was large enough to merit a mention from the organizers at the Tea Party.

Much as I liked all the speeches, I particularly enjoyed Governor Sanford’s remarks.  They say that brevity is the soul of wit and Sanford captured that today.  He spoke for just over six minutes and he was, as usual, inspiring to all who hold to conservative principles.  His video is below.

I’ll place more photos below the video but mark this.  This movement is not a flash in the pan as some would have you believe.  This is a real grass roots movement and it is here to stay.  Congress had better be listening because we are certainly paying attention to what they’re doing and their careers could be in serious jeopardy if they don’t change their ways.

(Note: The video is shaky because it was shot with a still camera using 12x zoom.  It’s pretty difficult to avoid some shake without a tripod.  Also, sound quality isn’t great because I wa a long way from the speakers.  Still, you can hear what the governor had to say.)

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