Tuesday, May 24, 2011

What if they gave a Tea Party and nobody came?

Actually, that's what happened in South Carolina last week.

Columbia's Tea Party chairman, Allen Olson, said he expected as many as 2,000 to show up a rally last Thursday at the Statehouse because Donald Trump would be there.

The Donald stood them up, however. And The State newspaper ran a delicious photo of Nikki Haley speaking on the Statehouse steps to exactly two lonely Tea Partiers. You can see it here.

Haley, of "I don't like the unions" fame, announced to the tiny group that she was starting a "Governors Tea Party Coalition." Good luck with that. 

Here's a question, though. Why did the newspaper send a photographer to a Tea Party rally where only a handful of people showed up? We saw no photos at a March 12 Statehouse rally where 2,500 people showed up to protest cuts to education and health care.

Maybe we just didn't look hard enough. Or maybe the Tea Party is just one fiction the media can't let go of.