WashPost lets Beck, Bachmann spin rally attendance
August 29, 2010 10:51 am ET by Eric Boehlert
From the Post's write-up of the Glenn Beck rally, here's the only mention of the crowd size debate [emphasis added]:
The size of the gathering promises to be a subject of contention. Demonstrations on the Mall are notoriously difficult to estimate, with no official source for such figures. At one point, Beck joked he had "just gotten word from the media that there is over a thousand people here today." Later, he told he [sic] crowd he heard it was "between 300,000 and 500,000."
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), speaking soon after the Beck rally at her own impromptu event nearby, said: "We're not going to let anyone get away with saying there were less than a million here today - because we were witnesses."
So if you read only the Post account you'd think that the point of " contention" was between conservative Beck (500K!) and conservative Bachmann (1M!).
But of course, the contention stemmed from skeptics who wondered if, like Tea Party organizers in the past, Beck and his allies would simply concoct the size of the rally. Y'know, the way Tea Party fans claimed 2M people marched on Washington, D.C. in Sept. 2009, when in fact, according to fire department estimates, just 60-70,000 people marched.
Oops.
And sure enough, according to an outside firm hired by CBS News, the only independent and semi-official estimate of Saturday's crowd was pegged at 87,000. (Or about 900,000 less than Bachmann's claim.) But the Post forgot to include that in its article. Instead, the Post simply allowed Beck and Bachmann to pull crowd size numbers out of thin air.
Beck says between 300,000-500,000, Bachman says at least 1 million...that adds up to 1,300,000 to 2,000,000(I added in the TV viewers just to be fair).
Some people say that Palin demands $1.00 per person so her side will bring out a figure around 2 1/2 million.
And is Bachman gauranteed to win this time around?
Raspy will conduct a poll with questions supplied by Luntz. Over 110% of all Republicans responding that they were there. So between the Repubs and the Tpers, 700 million were in attendance and Beck rose to heaven just before Palin denied him three times.
*Phone survey. No answer = yes my entire family*** attended
***Entire Family= 100 people
**Margin of Error -7,900,000
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And as those boasts are made I'm betting they'll shy away from showing the aerial photographs. Yes, they certain did extend their audience that far, but a quick look will show how they were boxed in behind the guard rails, and while the line is long, it's also obviously thin.
I found this on Reuters.
It can't help be noticed that there's a lot of empty, green spaces in the areas behind the main line. They're not exactly packed in tight.
Now compare that to this photo taken from Obama's inauguration.
Mind you, that's the area around the Capitol that was reserved for 240,000 ticket holders.
So, do they really want to run with the 300,000, 500,000, 1,000,000 estimates?
Well, I'm hoping they do. It just gives us another something to laugh at.
By any estimation the crowd was large and easily the biggest over the last ten years there.
BTW...how big Sharpton's crowd? Nothing but hate spewing at that event from what I saw.
Just because a few talking heads who know how to stage a publicity sucking event or know how to work a camera doesn't mean they have the majority under their spell.
Or at their beck and call, if you will
That a small portion of the population of the U.S. is completely and utterly bats--t crazy.
Oh, that's not where they were pulling the numbers from. Think lower. And behind them.