A thinner Tea Party

Glenn Beck has upstaged the Tea Party.

The crowd was thin at Sunday's 9/12 Tea Party rally in Washington compared to Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial two weeks earlier. Still, the 9/12 crowd filled in the lawn on the west front of the Capitol, a crowd that in my unscientific estimate looked like several thousand people. Folks I chatted with on the lawn said last year's was several times larger---but they attributed the meager attendance to the closeness of the rallies.

"We had to choose one or the other," said Marilyn Burton, who with her husband Jack traveled from Wantagh, N.Y. They said coming to both rallies would have cost them $400.

I did find a Dallas Tea Partier who had come for both.

"There's no oil well in my backyard. I'm sacrificing to come here," said Mary Bosworth. "But I have to save my country."

Creative signs were not in short supply. Even a dog ran by with a sign on his back: "I created two shovel-ready projects today."

Meanwhile, joggers (taking part in the staple activity of all Washingtonians) weaved through the crowd as they made for the open spaces on the mall beyond the Capitol. With two Tea Party rallies in the last two weeks, they must be accustomed now to seeing a sea of "Don't Tread on Me" flags and tri-corner hats.