American Maggie

This weekend’s Taxpayer March on Washington was the culmination of a season of discontent. Beginning last year with the first bailout, things started to heat up with the spring and summer tea parties and really gained momentum in August with the town hall meetings around the country. Americans have been raising their voices in opposition of a government that wants to take over everything from banks to health care. On Saturday, they came to Washington.

We were there. And while there were some pretty entertaining signs this weekend, the most exciting part of the experience was meeting the people – the individuals who saved their money and gave up summer vacations to come to Washington by planes, trains, and automobiles. Politicians would do well to realize that the people marching on Saturday were from every corner of this nation, and they represent every kind of voter imaginable. There were conservatives, libertarians, independents, Republicans, Democrats, young, old, middle-aged, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, female, male, straight, gay, single, married, poor, rich, middle class, activists, teachers, miners, stay-at-home moms, bloggers, students, small business owners, and the list goes on. Most importantly, we are all Americans, we are all voters, and we are all tuning in.

The two of us writing this article signify one of the balancing acts that exists within this movement, representing two different elements of the conservative spectrum. One of us is a long-time Republican and the other is a political new-comer with conservative tendencies. We are from opposite sides of America – one of us lives in Washington DC; the other is from Washington State.

One of us has worked for campaigns, on Capitol Hill, and at DC think tanks; the other works for a nonprofit during the day, goes to improv comedy rehearsals at night, and organizes rallies on the weekends. We represent the DC establishment and the Seattle protestor – and it takes both for a national grassroots political movement to truly succeed.

What do we have in common? We are both young women who marched from Freedom Plaza to the Capitol lawn this weekend to tell Congress and the President that we can do a better job of spending our own money and managing our healthcare than the federal government.

There are wildly divergent estimates of the size of the crowd. Over the weekend the MSM reported that there were numbers ranging from the “thousands,” a la the New York Times, to the more generous estimate of “tens of thousands” used by most other media outlets. Those estimates are completely at odds with some day-of reports that claimed attendance of over one million. Our guess at the time was between 250,000 and 500,000 marchers – most certainly in the hundreds of thousands. New aerial photographs recently released by Freedom Works are finally demonstrating the actual size of the rally.

But no matter how many people were present at the March, one thing is undeniable: The protestors who took to the streets of Washington and flooded Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the Capitol represent the views of millions upon millions of Americans across the country who stayed at home on Saturday and have profound concerns about the President’s plans for their health care.

With public opinion on healthcare deeply divided, with more Americans disapproving of Obama’s handling of health care policy than approving, with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets around the country in protest, it is almost humorous to watch the Democrat leaders in Washington flounder in response.

When David Axelrod says the anti-ObamaCare protestors are “not representative of the majority,” we say: Keep fooling yourself.

When Nancy Pelosi calls Americans who go to their Congressmen’s town hall meetings to express their views as “un-American,” we say: Keep digging your Party’s political grave.

Clearly, this moment in American political history provides a huge opportunity for the Republican Party to begin building a majority again – and the GOP can and should take advantage of it. But the biggest mistake the Republicans could make is to believe that any of what is going on right now is a result of the actions taken by the GOP. All of the fervor, all of the fury of this nationwide grassroots movement has been a negative reaction to proposals from President Obama and Democrats in Congress, not national excitement for Republican proposals. The signs at the March on Washington reflected this mood, with the popularity of negative statements – from the classic “Don’t Tread on Me” flags to the home-made “I am not your ATM” sign – rather than positive statements.

There is no natural link between this movement and support for the Republican Party – yet. Many activists at tea parties and town halls around the country were independents. Many protestors at the March in Washington were apolitical, never having attended a political rally before. The challenge of the GOP is to galvanize this national sentiment against this Administration and this Congress, translate it into a reason to support Republicans, and mobilize it into votes for our candidates at the polls in 2010 and 2012.

To this end, there is something truly hopeful in our personal experience at this weekend’s March. After having taken extraordinarily different paths in life, this weekend we found ourselves walking shoulder to shoulder down Pennsylvania Avenue armed with one, united message: a government big enough to give you everything you need is big enough to take everything you have, including your freedom. From one Washington to another, we hope the politicians listen.

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Keli Carender is a tea partier and founder of the activist network, the Seattle Sons & Daughters of Liberty.  Rachel Hoff is a young Republican activist based in Washington, DC.

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