Can you hear us now?

CCC didn’t get to DC for TEA, but I did.

Actually, C and I did make the thousand mile trip to Washington to join in.

   C is for Christie (my daughter); C is also for Connie (her best friend); and the other C is for Carol (her North Louisiana cousin).  DC is obvious and TEA is for the March on Washington by conservatives who want the government, of all stripes, to stop spending billions of dollars of our money for every stupid earmark, bailing out banks, carmakers and insurance companies and trying to spend another trillion dollars on Obamacare, the ill-fated health reform bunk pushed by her highness Pelosi and in-political-trouble Harry Reid from Nevada.

   The three C’s had made plans to leave last week on a straight-through drive from here to Washington to take part in Saturday’s March on Washington, a massive Tea Party to show Washington that conservatives across America are fed up with the kind of would-be America the Democrats are trying to foist upon our country.

  When two of the girls found out at the last minute they could not make the trip, Christie was left standing alone, very unhappy that it appeared her plan to go to Washington had been aborted.  Knowing how important this was to her and how much she had been looking forward to it, I immediately decided that the two of us would get up the next morning and head north.

   Christie had signs made up for the march and I was ready.

   We made it a two-day drive instead of one, however.

  On that Saturday morning, we hopped the metro in Northern Virginia and made the ride to the Federal Triangle on Pennsyl-vania Avenue. The metro ride in was a hoot, with hundreds of people jamming every car to the door, Many people waiting to get on had to wait for later trains, but they eventually got there.

  It was so crowded at the Triangle we could hardly walk and were unable to hear the early speeches. But after about an hour, the mass of people started moving toward the Capitol. We walked fast, our signs of protest held high, and made it to the West Lawn in time to get up near the front as the speeches began. It was an overcast day and quite comfortable as men and women from across the country spoke out against the Democrats’ health care ploy, government spending and socialist-leaning senators and representatives.

  One of my favorite “cheers” which went up on high all during the day was:  “Can you hear us now?!”

  The number of conservatives there that day is unclear. The best estimates seem to have been between 75,000 and 100,000. The DC Police Dept. refused to make an estimate since they had been criticized many times before for playing politics with the numbers.  

   I can tell you this: it was huge. It was orderly and loud. The messages were clear and nobody used a teleprompter.  

   There were literally thousands of posters and signs carried by the throng. One of ours was “Congress is the disease, not the cure.”  There were almost as many criticisms of the Repubicans as the Democrats.  It was a strong message to both sides of the aisle: control spending, stop waste, reward work, stop the move to socialism, return to the conservative values of the founding fathers, obey the Constitution, fire the Czars, stop supporting ACORN, no government-run health care.

   It was a sea of red, white and blue American  flags and banners.  The music and speeches were All-American.

   Liberals would not have felt welcome, however; let’s tell it like it is.  It was a day for conservatives to show up, march and be heard.  President Obama wasn’t around to hear, however. He went to make his daily speech in Minnesota—with his teleprompter along for the ride.

  The March on DC wound up at 3 o’clock and Christie and I, rather worn out from a very busy day, made our way out of the masses and headed out of the city back to Virginia.  

  We awoke to a rainy Sunday morning and began our two-day thousand mile drive back South.  We had joined the March with thousands of Americans from all over the nation.

   Our parting shot and hope lie in five words:  “Can you hear us now?”

Lou Major Sr. was publisher of The Daily News for 34 years (1963-1997) and retired as CEO of Wick Communications.