sotto@tampatrib.com sotto@tampatrib.com
Published: December 18, 2009
It was the timing that made it so unlikely.
On a cloudy, breezy weekday in the middle of December, the idea of a political rally of any kind seemed out of place, especially at a park on the north edge of Plant City.
At four in the afternoon people usually are working - although in Plant City, where bad news has piled upon bad news all year, that's not so much true these days in a miserable recession.
At the least, they should be winding up Christmas shopping or getting groceries for a weekend of football and holiday parties. Elections still are far enough in the future that even the dreaded TV political ads are months away.
And this was less a political rally than a celebration of the first "tea party" back on Dec. 16, 1773.
Small groups came drifting in to where a small stage with a row of American flags had been set up. There were booths selling T-shirts, mostly with an eagle above the statement, "We're coming in 2010" on the back, and "Tea Party" on the front.
That's what this was, a "Tea Party." As best as I can determine the "Tea Party" crowd is made up mostly of people who are angry at the way government works (or doesn't) and believe America's values are being frittered away in the name of socialist ideas.
It was a good crowd of close to 400 people, which I suppose is relative when you consider more than 3,000 showed up a few months ago in Plant City for a job fair.
The media's fault
The first speaker was a man named Willie Dawson, who said he was a talk show host on a local radio station. He began by blaming everyone he could think of for our ills and especially the media, which he said was complicit in lying to the American people. Considering he was a member of that very group I couldn't tell if he was lying or not.
The main speaker was Marco Rubio, the former Miami legislator who is trying to out-conservative Charlie Crist for the Republican nomination for a seat in the United States Senate. If you believe the pollsters, he has drawn up almost even with the governor.
The glamour guys
You can see why Rubio is going to do well. He looks a little bit like ABC talking head George Stephanopoulos with a hair cut. He'll be able to hold his own when he goes up against Crist's deep tan.
He also understood this crowd. His populist message and call to return to less government and more traditional American values was right up their flag pole. He also has a relaxed style so that when someone asked him why he was running he was ready with an "I want to win the Nobel Peace Prize" answer.
A crowd followed him out for photographs and handshakes. A man wearing an "American Patriot" shirt told him, "I'm going to vote for you, but you'd better not lie like the rest of them and raise my taxes." Rubio smiled and kept going.
I asked him a little later if he saw himself as becoming the favorite of the Tea Party crowd. He said: "These people are less a party than the mainstream of America's thought. They aren't organized and they have many different concerns, but they want to be heard and we would be wise to listen."
Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings.
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