Trump in Dallas

Apparently record-breaking crowd. I hope we hear more about that today.

To think the election is a full year away and the crowds are already this huge is quite remarkable.

I noticed when I followed the oddballs walking past the front door of our building heading toward City Park then turning into the capitol that the crowd was incredibly small. This turned out to be the very first tea party rally in Denver. But I didn't know anything about it at the time. The speakers were all newly activated into politics. Their single issue was the deficit. That's what all their speeches were about. 

It was a cold morning. The Nikon camera was new and I didn't know how to use it. The people worried me a bit because they all looked determined and their signs made them look a bit like crackpots. Determined crackpots. 

Walking 14th from Lincoln to the back of the capitol I dropped a lens cap on the sidewalk. 

A very large woman easily twice my weight and older than me by a decade stepped out of the movement of people walking up the sidewalk, literally up, it's built on a hill, thus Capital Hill, and she bent low to the ground and snatched up the lens cap and handed it to me in passing. And I thought, "Wow." 

How gracious.

I learned although determined and crackpotish they're actually all very nice. 

Here is the photoset on Flickr. 

Is that adorable, or what?

Then a year later it happened again. I followed again. This time the crowd was much larger. Easily 6X the number of people as the first one. This time in the front of the capitol. The event attracted a lot more people with no connection to the tea party whatsoever. I saw lines of school busses and city trucks plastered plying the streets with anti-abortion messages. Dreadful signage plastered all over their sides and back. And I thought, "Man, that's very ugly and shocking. What the heck are they doing here? " 

The event attracted all kinds of groups of people simply glomming onto the event. People who want their political message out since a crowd is already attracted to something else. They're piggy-backing onto the tea-party for their eyeballs. 

Now every large event attracts everyone, even people against the people assembling. They simply cannot resist the crowd upon whom they wish to shout their messages. Even though certainly nobody is listening. They often pretend to have a discussion but nobody ever budges because the crowd did not attracted open minded people. Rather, it attracted crackpots. 

Like me.

And I'm not going to accept any political pamphlets handed to me by a hippy bag lady.