The Taxpayer March on DC was HUGELY successful [updated]

How huge? Your guess is as good as mine.



But it was more than scores, more than thousands, and more than scores of thousands. (Video from The Rhetorician via Instapundit) Estimates are running between 350,000 and 15,720,000. I'd settle for a million but I guess we'll never know.**

It was a monster for sure, and a scary one, I hope, for our elected representatives. Viva the outrage.

Mark Hemingway spoke to some of the marchers:

I asked one guy, who came up from South Carolina with 160 people on three buses, who put his trip together. He laughed and said, "My neighbor." Can we drive a stake through the astroturf claim now?

Another interesting detail about the march — it was filled with immigrants. I'm pretty sure every Cuban in a thousand mile radius was there, helpfully explaining to everyone who would listen that Cuba's vaunted free health care system involves shoddily trained doctors and bringing your own linen to the hospital. I also spoke to angry immigrants from England and Ireland, appalled the country was slouching toward socialized medicine.

He's got some great pictures, too.

I'm going to keep updating.

*Vodka Pundit reports:

•70 outdoor port-a-potties.
•90 minute wait to use one.
•The People Meter on Penn Ave had read 450,000 by noon, and 1.5 million two hours later. (That last number still looks awfully high to me.)
•1 DC police officer, who told her, “I’ve been here 20 years and this is the largest crowd I’ve ever seen.”

*This Ain't Hell's John Lilyea shot some video from his bike. Lots and lots of people. And noise.

**The Daily Mail has some great coverage. They put the number at "up to 2 million." Egads! Some wonderful excerpts:

Up to two million people marched to the U.S. Capitol today, carrying signs with slogans such as "Obamacare makes me sick" as they protested the president's health care plan and what they say is out-of-control spending.

The line of protesters spread across Pennsylvania Avenue for blocks, all the way to the capitol, according to the Washington Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency.

People were chanting "enough, enough" and "We the People." Others yelled "You lie, you lie!" and "Pelosi has to go," referring to California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

Demonstrators waved U.S. flags and held signs reading "Go Green Recycle Congress" and "I'm Not Your ATM." Men wore colonial costumes as they listened to speakers who warned of "judgment day" - Election Day 2010.

Richard Brigle, 57, a Vietnam War veteran and former Teamster, came from Michigan. He said health care needs to be reformed - but not according to President Barack Obama's plan.

"My grandkids are going to be paying for this. It's going to cost too much money that we don't have," he said while marching, bracing himself with a wooden cane as he walked. [. . .]

Like countless others at the rally, Joan Wright, 78, of Ocean Pines, Md., sounded angry. "I'm not taking this crap anymore," said Wright, who came by bus to Washington with 150 like-minded residents of Maryland's Eastern Shore. "I don't like the health-care [plan]. I don't like the czars. And I don't like the elitists telling us what we should do or eat."

God bless freedom-loving Americans. I'm going to open a bottle of wine with dinner tonight, if I can tear myself away from the coverage long enough to cook something.

***RedState has lotsa photos.

****Matt Welch offers quick impressions, including:

The most moving chant might have been when we walked past the Newseum, with its ginormous carving of the First Amendment on the side, and the crowd spontaneously said "Read that wall! Read that wall!"

Here on in, just links:
Honoring Jonah
Numbers game
Pic's and video from the Patriot Room
Great photos and great title (Don't miss George at the bottom.)

I give up. Go to Memeorandum for more.

*****Just one more: Here's a report and photojournal from uber-mom and writer Barbara Curtis.

As a 60s/70s radical leftist, I organized many of the antiwar marches - even got teargassed a time or two. About the only mark I carry from those days is that I'm still questioning authority. But today that makes me a conservative.

I brought my camera to DC to tell the REAL story of the 9/12 March. Madame Pelosi and the state-run media call us "Astroturf" and "Nazis" and "an angry mob." Following Alinsky, they'd like to freeze us in these false images and thereby marginalize us. But we are next-door neighbors. family and friends.

Read the rest.

******Update: Byron York writes a good summary of the March.

"It's a mistake," Dunch says. "It's going to result in ultimate rationing and limiting care to our elderly. We need universal access of patients with pre-existing illnesses. We need to open up the 50 states to all insurance plans. We need tort reform. We don't have to trash the current system."

Dunch has come here with his wife, who is a nurse, because he believes the president is "telling half-truths" by citing the support of the American Medical Association to suggest that most physicians favor Obamacare -- when in fact the AMA represents a relatively small minority of doctors. The situation is enough to turn a private physician into a protester. "I've never been political before," Dunch says. "This is atypical for me."

RTR.

Comments welcome.

Most recent posts here.