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BachmaniaMichele Bachmann invites tea partiers to Washington for another swig.

By Christopher BeamPosted Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009, at 9:33 PM ET

Whether it was billing the event as a "Super Bowl of Freedom" or challenging conservatives to "scare" members of Congress, it worked. Rep. Michele Bachmann got thousands of protesters to flood the lawn in front of the Capitol building Thursday afternoon, joining her for what was originally described as a "press conference" but turned out to be a full-blown rally against health care reform—a mini-sequel to the 9/12 protest of two months ago.

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"Hi everyone!" Bachmann said to the cheering crowd. "You came!" On short notice, too. Bachmann planted the seed only last week when she told Sean Hannity of Fox News that she hoped viewers would come to her press conference and then walk through the congressional office buildings, "up and down through the halls, find members of Congress, look at the whites of their eyes and say, 'Don't take away my health care.' "

That's essentially what happened. After a brief introduction by Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri*, who led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance—"It drives the liberals crazy"—and the National Anthem, Bachmann spoke of the protesters' place in history. "Thomas Jefferson said revolution every now and then is a good thing," she said. It reminded her of what Abigail Adams wrote to John Adams: " 'After all we've done, I wonder if generations unborn will know what was done for them.' … We are that privileged generation," Bachmann said.

Bachmann soon turned over the podium to actor Jon Voight, who in addition to starring in National Treasure, she said, is "a national treasure." Voight played the role of pundit admirably. "President Obama has his own obsession with trying to ram this health bill through and create a socialist America," he said. "We as freedom-loving Americans must not be scared into Obama's radical Chicago tactics. His agenda is not for the poor. It's solely for his political gain. His lies and propaganda are all very blatant, shown to us by those who exposed ACORN, which is as corrupt as all the president's czars."

Republican leaders took turns riling up the crowd as well. "I do think there is a rebellion going on in this country," said House Minority Leader John Boehner. "How else could you get 10,000 people to show up with only a few days notice?" Minority Whip Eric Cantor assured the audience that "your efforts to stop this bill are being heard loud and clear." Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee noted the number of women in the crowd and said the summer's town halls were "like an inoculation to prevent the illness that is Pelosi care. … So this is our booster shot!" "As a physician," said Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, "I've got a diagnosis. … Legislative malpractice!" (Best metaphor of the day went to Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia, who told the audience, "Go tell your Congress member that you're not going to eat this rotten, stinking fish that is Pelosi health care.")

Many protesters measured their anger in miles. A woman named Lisa drove all the way from Dayton, Ohio, on Wednesday, even though she has to be in Michigan for a wedding Friday afternoon. "That shows how angry we are," she said. Others came from West Virginia, Florida, and Texas. Ruth McCormick drove in from Ridgeville, Ind., just to let Democrats know that "We're not going away."

Some of them dressed for the occasion. Before the speeches started, a man in a death costume grabbed a bullhorn and introduced two protesters dressed up as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Each was bound in chains and their clothes were spattered in blood. Baby dolls hung upside down from their chains. Around each wrist they wore bracelets made of what looked like small plastic fetuses. "Whyyyy?" moaned the Pelosi character. "Why did I kill the babies?" Nearby, Nancy Murphy of Annapolis, Md., complained that they were making the rally look bad. "We want you to write about this," she said, indicating the rest of the protest. "Not about that." Indeed, many protesters were still livid over media coverage of the 9/12 protest, particularly the phrase teabagger. "Do you see anyone here with nutsacks on their face?" said one man to me.

Their main grievance was health care reform—some periodically broke out into chants of "Kill the bill!"—but many protesters saw reform as a part of a larger problem of government overreach: the stimulus, bailouts, and proposed cap-and-trade legislation. Dolores, a woman from the Dayton area, objected to the lies she saw coming out of the White House. The last time she came to Washington to protest, it was during the bombing of Cambodia in 1970. "They were lying to us then, they're lying to us now," she said. Another woman went on about health care for a good five minutes before she asked whether I was aware that Obama showed "signs of the Antichrist."

As the speeches wrapped up, the day entered phase two: confrontation. The destination was Pelosi's office. When I arrived, staffers were politely greeting people and inviting them to sign the guest book. ("Kill the bill!!!"—again, popular.) Someone soon brought copies of the 2,000-page legislation, which protesters proceeded to rip up and scatter across the floor. Police intervened, and about a dozen people were arrested to cries of "Martin Luther King!" and "Letter From Birmingham Jail!" (They weren't the only peaceful resistors of the day. Nine pro-health care reform protesters were jailed after a sit-in in front of Sen. Joe Lieberman's office.)

Republican offices, meanwhile, were delighted. Frank Wolf of Virginia posted a sign on his office door: "We are here. Please come in. Thanks." Joe Wilson of South Carolina had a good 50 signatures in his guest book. ("He DID lie!") Blackburn, who had spoken at the protest, was receiving well-wishers and posing for photos. Scott Garrett of New Jersey was holding court before a crowd of 40 people mesmerized by his remarks on the powers enumerated in the Constitution.

That was the main difference between the 9/12 protests and Thursday's rally. While congressional Republicans largely responded to the September event, they spearheaded this one. Boehner stood alongside Jon Voight as he called Obama a liar and propagandist. (There were no calls for a Joe Wilson-style apology.) Cantor stood there while protesters raised signs suggesting that Obama "takes his orders from the Rothschilds," the family that was once central to theories of Jewish world dominance.

Thus did members of the GOP leadership court a subspecies of Republican that, as recently as a year ago, many would have ignored. (Many still do: Gov.-elect Chris Christie of New Jersey distanced himself from the tea parties during his campaign, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele was notably absent today.) Now, these fringe Republicans—with an assist by Bachmann, who first rose to prominence by suggesting that Obama wanted to round up young people up and send them to "re-education camps"—are taking over Congress. Or, for a day anyway, the Capitol.

Correction, Nov. 6: This article originally identified the speaker as Rep. Tom Price of Georgia. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

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Christopher Beam is a Slate political reporter. Follow him on Twitter.

Photograph of Michael Steele by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

Bachmann is a few cans shy of a six pack, and much of the "tea bag" frenzy -- including the reflexive and wholly unjustifiable claims about Obama's socialist agenda -- has been as manifestly absurd as the Republican establishment's embrace of such notions has been cravenly cynical. That you only have to talk to these people for a few minutes to uncover the (at best) fringe ideas and (at worst) racial resentments -- the Antichrist? the Rothschilds? -- underlying their protests, tells you pretty much everything you need to know. That said, I have to confess that part of me is very happy to discover that there are still people with enough fire in the belly to drive hundreds of miles on short notice to, as they say, "make their voices heard." It means that the formidable powers of a consumer society bent on lulling us into a half-sleep of instant gratification and cheap thrills hasn't entirely succeeded. After all, why go out of your way to cheer at a protest that will most likely prove fruitless, when you have your X-Box, Netflix, Doritos, and an endless sea of internet porn? At the very least it signals that a capacity for political activism, however misguided and poorly informed it may be, is still with us. A capacity for civic engagement is the lifeblood of our politics, and while I'm convinced Bachmann is a lunatic, part of me still smiles when I see a protest, any protest.

-- ribalding
(To reply, click here)

If you can't compete with ideas then you bus in a mob, screw up the Pledge of Allegiance, listen to actors play politics, litter in the Capital building, and graffiti a guest book. Where are the Republicans ideas for how to solve the crisis of rising medical costs and the uninsured? Tort reform is not going to do it. A federal takeover of the state insurance regulators, reducing all states to the lowest common denominator, is not going to do it. Ranting about socialism and the red menace just shows everyone how brainwashed you are.

-- fletc3her
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As a Dem, I say.. bring it on. You had posters with pictures of Holocaust victims and dead babies, t-shirts with racist pictures, aluminum-foil conspiracy theorists, and a few thousand other assorted radicals frothing at the mouth about the middle class getting better health care.

A sensible Republican Party would stay miles away from that lunacy... but the current one decides to show up, misquote the Constitution, and lead by example.

They seem to be caught in some sort of greenhouse effect... each layer of crazy insulates them from any contact with reality, drives those who used to identify with them farther away, and makes the next insane statement seem all the more reasonable.

Pass the popcorn.

-- Trace192
(To reply, click here)

We have to indulge the fringe if we want anyone to show up to our protests.

Our party has a severe disadvantage to the Dems in arranging protests among our mainstream constituency--the overwhelming majority of us have jobs (which is probably the main reason why we oppose healthcare reform).

Thus, to get anyone to show up, we have to engage in a bit of demagoguery to attract the unemployable but delightfully paranoid among us. Are the Hitler comparisons distasteful? Sure they are. They're not even remotely apt. They're self-produced by a some of our more aggressive minions.

But these people won't respond to arguments about, say, the dilution of our currency through the issuance of debt. They won't respond to historical examples of great powers who squandered their treasury through morally satisfying but low return investments. Hell, social Darwinism doesn't even work anymore.

So please, pardon our indulgence. We had to put up with eight years of hippies.

-- Benotniani
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