Advertisements

This weekend, a far-right, anti-government group calling itself Patriots For America, plans to organize a ‘huge’ march on Washington, D.C. The march is supposed to be the first phase of a plan they are calling Operation American Spring. The organizer of this event, retired US Army Colonel Harry Riley, is claiming that they may get up to 10 million ‘patriots’ to attend this ‘peaceful’ march on the nation’s capital. The intent of the march is supposed to be to show the country’s current leaders that they are violating the US Constitution and that the nation’s citizens would like them to be removed from office.

Advertisements

Let’s get this out of the way. There is NO WAY this crackpot is going to get 10 million people to march on Washington. He’ll be lucky if he can get 10,000 people to make their way to this event. And, honestly, 10,000 seems like a very, very high estimate. Currently, the Facebook page for Operation American Spring has fewer than 24,000 likes. However, judging from the comments on the page, it is possible that a large percentage of those liking the page are progressives and Occupy-types who are just there to contradict the nonsensical posts left on the page. The event’s official website, an amateurish, haphazard mess, has a global Alexa ranking of 146,000 and an American ranking of 30,000. Not bad for a blog, but it hardly instills confidence if you are hoping to attract millions of people to an event.

The three phases of Operation American Spring are hilarious. It displays the extreme delusions of the group, as Riley and his followers apparently think they can create a huge uprising that will overthrow the government and then place a tribunal of Tea Party darlings in charge. Below are the three phases, per the website:

Phase 1 - Field millions, as many as ten million, patriots who will assemble in a peaceful, non-violent, physically unarmed (Spiritually/Constitutionally armed), display of unswerving loyalty to the US Constitution and against the incumbent government leadership, in Washington, D.C., with the mission to replace with law abiding leadership. Go full-bore, no looking back, steadfast in the mission. Phase 2 – One million or more of the assembled 10 million must be prepared to stay in D.C. as long as it takes to see Obama, Biden, Reid, McConnell, Boehner, Pelosi, and Attorney General Holder removed from office.

Consistent with the US Constitution, as required, the U.S. Congress will take appropriate action, execute appropriate legislation, deal with vacancies, or U.S. States will appoint replacements for positions vacated consistent with established constitutional requirements. Phase 3 - Those with the principles of a West, Cruz, Dr. Ben Carson, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, should comprise a tribunal and assume positions of authority to convene investigations, recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees to the new U.S. Attorney General appointed by the new President. *All actions in Phase 2 & 3 will be consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

As you can see, one million people must plan to occupy Washington for as long as it takes to remove all of the traitors of the Constitution from office. Once they can get all of these illegal occupants of office removed, they can then set up a tribunal, comprised of those with the right principles, that will then go about levying charges on all of the lawbreakers of the Constitution and put America back on the right track. Sure, it may sound like a coup, but that’s what you have to do when your Constitutional rights are being trampled on!

Anyway, this is all going to go down just like all of the other so-called ‘huge’ events that were supposed to show President Obama and other elected officials in Washington that the Tea Party has had enough with their flouting of the Constitution. Remember when Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks claimed that over 1 million people attended Glenn Beck’s 9-12 rally in 2009, only for it to be revealed that the number was actually around 60,000? Then you had the following year’s Restoring Honor Rally, also organized by Beck. While Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that there were a million people there, actual crowd estimates put it closer to 80,000.

Those two actually had lots of promotion and actual infrastructure due to Beck’s media visibility at the time. Attempts since to rally a million angry conservatives to D.C. have been laughingly bad. There was the whole ‘Ride for the Constitution’ trucker protest that was supposed to occur last year during the federal government shutdown. The organizer claimed that a few thousand rigs would circle the nation’s capital for three days, disrupting traffic as a sign of protest. In the end, only bout a couple dozen actual big rigs participated, along with a handful of supporters in pickup trucks.

There have also been attempts to have gun rights advocates march on D.C. to protest both the nation’s and district’s gun laws. A 2nd Amendment march in 2010 attracted a few hundred protesters. Meanwhile, last year’s planned ‘Open Carry March,’ that was scheduled for July 4th, never did occur, based partially on how amazingly bad the idea was, but also because it looked like nobody would show. Instead, the event’s organizer went alone and then loaded a gun on Freedom Plaza. I guess he showed who’s who!

In the end, this event will be a laughingstock, mainly due to the outsized expectations of its organizers. It is true, the Republican Party as a whole has shifted farther to the right due to the Tea Party’s influence. However, it appears that events and rallies like this one are a bit too much for most conservatives’ appetites.