Rally for the Republic.

I've never been to a political rally before, and I think the Rally for the Republic was a good first-time event. I was amazed at how many people from all over the country had come to show their support for Ron Paul.

On Sunday, we got a glimpse of cars in the class parking lot from Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and California. That was no day-trip excursion for those folks, never mind that they most likely had to take time off from their jobs to come to the rally. On Monday night there was an informal gathering at a nightclub for rally-comers, and I met people from Iowa, Brooklyn, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Texas, and Florida.

After watching conventions and events on television in the middle-of-nowhere-Utah for seven years, to actually be present and involved in something this big, this ALT-mainstream, was awesome. To be with so many other people that felt the same way that I did about overreaching government, taxes, foreign policy, and the like was actually mind-blowing. I've always felt like my husband and I were on this libertarian-minarchist planet all alone when it came to how the country should be run. In my life, I had never actually met other people that mostly believed in the politics that we practiced and voted. We were all together for one shining moment in Minneapolis this week--all 12,000 of us that could come, which means there might be at least 1.2 million of us out there on the whole, if not more.

There were all kinds of crazy booths set up inside the Target Center that people could browse between the long list of speakers that included Jesse Ventura, Gary Johnson, Lew Rockwell, Barry Goldwater, Jr., and Ron Paul. The Free State Project (a political movement to get people to move to New Hampshire and take over the state via local politics) had a booth and we talked with those folks for quite a while. My husband and I have absolutely no intention of moving to New Hampshire, but we'll go and visit because we love to travel. We got pocket copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence from the John Birch Society--who knew that they were still around? The guy at the Liberty Dollar booth was totally interesting, because he was trying to introduce private currency based on precious metals. His coins were beautiful; however, he was still struggling from an FBI/Treasury Department raid earlier in the year that had taken all of the metals on which the value of his coins were based. Man, the government HATES competition.

For the second time within two years, I was within six feet of MSNBC's Willie Geist (formerly of Tucker, now on Morning Joe). The first time was a over a year ago on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. I turned around and almost ran into him. This time, I turned around from some table full of liberty schwag and there he was with a camera guy. Is this some kind of sign from the universe? What kind of coincidence could this be? I sort of wanted to talk to him, because how many times do you run into someone on TV in person in two totally different places in the United States? That alone was weird. My husband really wanted me to go talk with him, but I didn't want to be on TV, and Willie was obviously working to create a segment (which I watched this morning and loved. I would have loved to be hanging out during the editing process for the footage). I was certain that an appearance on cable news from a fringe rally wouldn't necessarily fly at my new job if powers-that-be happened to catch me on TV (I don't know if it's really flying now in my branch office as ultra-liberal co-workers discover the reason for my Minnesota trip; I hate not talking about it, but it's in my best interest not to tell them everything). I suppose I could have asked Willie where my "Situation with Tucker Carlson" mugs were that Brad Como said he would try to send to me. Now that the show has been canceled, I am deeply saddened that I didn't rate a mug--and that conversation probably would not have ended up on television.

Speaking of Tucker Carlson, he hosted the first of half of the event and was great, but he disappeared some time after Jesse Ventura spoke. This didn't surprise me at all, because Jesse is having a full-on, Lyndon-Johnson-post-presidency-style break down. After railing on the mainstream media and making some provocative 9/11 remarks in his speech, Jesse then threatened to return to the USA from his post-gubernatorial compound in Mexico and run for office in 2012. *gulp* For the love of god, somebody get him a cold shower, some strong coffee, new clothes, and a hair cut. If I was Tucker I may have had to distance myself from that spectacle alone--mainly because of the 9/11 comments. All I could envision was Jesse backstage holding some poor dog by its ears ala Johnson in that classic "I-am-out-to-lunch-now-and-my-dog-loves-being-held-up-by-the-ears" picture.

It was an entertaining day and in the final analysis, after taking days off from work and driving eleven hours to get to Minneapolis, I was glad that we did it. It was an excellent adventure.