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Tea Party protests continue to grow, retroactively

February 17, 2010 8:13 am ET by Eric Boehlert

Over the weekend, Instapundit's Gleen Reynold unccorked the claim that over the past twelves months "millions of Americans" had taken to the streets to protest the Obama administration. The problem? Rather than millions, the actually number is probably in the low six-figures. 

Oops. 

But mere facts have never stopped Glenn Beck, of course. So yesterday he endorsed the Reynolds fabrication and wallowed in the wonder of the "millions and millions of tea party people" who protested last year.

Punchline: Beck made the phony crowd claim while critiquing the New York Times' supposedly inaccurate Tea Party reporting! 

UPDATED: Also last night on Fox News, Tea Party organizer Karin Hoffman eagerly spread more falsehoods about protests, claiming 1.7  million people showed up in D.C. last September. According to official crowd estimates by D.C. officials, that number misses the mark by 1.6 million. 

Please note, the Tea Party movement is now building itself around an obvious, and provable, lie. Will the press ever point that out? 

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    • Author by rwmacdonald2091 (February 17, 2010 8:18 am ET)
      1  
      Alright already, the entire population of the world is part of the tea party movement, well except for that socialist/commie/Nazi/Stalinist Obama.
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    • Author by mrstrailerco (February 17, 2010 8:35 am ET)
         
      No. This is another edition of SATSQ
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    • Author by punkin (February 17, 2010 8:52 am ET)
      2  
      this tea party movement reminds me of a complaint box: some business puts out a complaint box and it gets stuffed with comments from disgruttled customers (patients, participants, etc). The problem is that there is no way of knowing what percentage of customers is dissatisfied. 90% of the customer base could be happy as clams and they aren't going to stuff a complaint in that ole box.... but the business owner has no way of knowing the percentage. Plus, it makes no difference if you call it the "complaint box" or the "comment box" or a "suggestions box" - satified people aren't going to put anything in there - you are just going to get comments from disgruttled people. AND,these disgruttled customers are very likely to put in more than one complaint
      So these tea party people inflate their numbers and count themselves over and over again when they go to different events. In their distorted way of thinking this math is perfectly okay, as is the math of assuming that everyone else thinks like they do and hence the 100K becomes millions - after all, everyone else would be there if they could be!
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      • Author by IRONY 101 (February 17, 2010 9:41 am ET)
           
        I thought the faces in the crowd at Sarah Palin's recent speech all looked familiar... ;>)
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    • Author by bilbo_dies (February 17, 2010 9:01 am ET)
      1  
      Since there are SO many of them, I believe that makes thema viable third party.

      Let them run in the primaries, go to their convention, nominate their candidates, and then run in the general election.

      If their movement is that widespread and popular they will win seats, even if they really don't have a clue.
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