Posted on 07/03/2013 3:20:42 PM PDT by ken5050
Thanks for the ping.
I think Craig Livingstone is here somewhere. LOL!
Thanks so much for this thread!
I was there!!
The gathering the night before in the captured hotel was a fantastic happening. We totally took over the whole hotel.
Gatherings were in corridors and stairways. There were people (not yet Freepers) from everywhere.
The memory is clear....... unerasable
It’s time to do it again
Alas, there is no leadership
I was there too but I must have been at a different hotel. I was lamenting the fact today that we didn’t have name tags so we could have connected with each other better.
That's how I got here.
That was my way here. I lurked for a long, long time. Then finally decided time to take a name. Have missed VERY few days that I do not peak in several times. A couple surgeries probably the only reason I would not log in.
Free Republic is an addiction!
Hi there!
Do you remember which rally was the one that was so cold we all nearly froze. I remember being pictured wrapped in a big fuzzy red white and blue blanket...and I still was cold!
I miss the get togethers with the DC Group!
YES, but what a great addiction!
One I do NOT want to break!
How many of us joined through a link on Drudge — the old Whitewater files? 5 posted on July 3, 2013 6:26:33 PM EDT by afraidfortherepublicI lurked for a few months and was there at the MfJ. I joined the day after.
I found FR via the Drudge link, lurked, went to the MfJ, and still didn’t register until the end of Feb ’99.Shook hands with the head of the WH Travel Office, whom Clinton had fired (which was merely immoral, no big deal for Clinton) and arbitrarily prosecuted even tho the people he putatively cheated were journalists who had complete confidence in him.
Need some pictures from the great party hosted (as I remember) by the TX Freepers...
Buuump!
I was there with my fath who passed away in 2000. I was so glad I got to share that with him.
Yes, the infowarrior was there, that sunny, but blustery late October day, bringing along Mrs infowarrior, whom I laughingly called "the international contingent", since she was at the time a legal resident alien, from Peru. She got an eyeful, that day, and an education in the art of peaceful dissent, American style, which she has not forgotten to this day...
the infowarrior
One young family drove all the way from Oklahoma (?) with a WEEK OLD INFANT and two children. Screen name: Marie Antoinette.
Absolutely amazing group of people!
Texas Freepers were the greatest with their huge Texas flag covering the entire balcony rail.
What a disparate, harmonious group.
I enjoyed revisiting Re-Joyce Smith's speech. "Everytime Sheila Jackson-Lee visits a black church trying to incite, she always brings up 'We were brought over in the belly of a slave ship'." We weren't brought over in the belly of a slave ship! We were born in America...America is my homeland."
I loved ReJoyce Smith. I assume she is no longer with us as she had some heart problems back then.
Those were definitely FR's best days...no comparicson today.
Hey Leni..thought you’d enjoy this..
What did Rush say about us? Here’s the link and an excerpt:
The Origins of the Tea Party
July 03, 2013
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/07/03/the_origins_of_the_tea_party
RUSH: You know, it’s interesting to try to pinpoint exactly when the Tea Party began. Now, the modern incarnation of the Tea Party as we understand it is a television phenomenon, and that was Obamacare. Obamacare and the stimulus, the debt and the spending, is what motivated people who were already thinking in a different way. Some people might think that the Tea Party’s origins really could be traced back to Clinton.
There was a group back in the 1990s — and they still exist. There was a group in the 1990s that were malcontents, renegades, and off the mainstream plantation of conservatism as articulated by the party. Those were the people that were the early participants in the website Free Republic. They were known as Freepers. They were... I say all this in a positive sense. I don’t want any negative connotation.
But they were one of the first visible groups of people off the reservation. And by that I mean abandoning the Republican Party’s confined definitions of conservatism. They were one of the first modern era groups of people to openly express dissatisfaction with the Republican Party the large. I think Clinton inspired a lot of that. It went somewhat dormant during the Bush years.
But even then these people were very distressed at what they were seeing on the spending side. They were really, really troubled because of what it was going to mean to their kids and their grandkids, all this debt. It was going to impede the creation of wealth as the government grew bigger and became more and more in debt, the government swallowed more and more of the private sector. .....”
Finally, if you can say there was a tipping point, it was Obamacare which caused this group of people — many of whom had never ever been involved in politics outside the ballot box — for the first time in their lives to show up at Town Hall meetings and demand to know what was going on. The Republican Party didn’t know what to do with them.
The Republican Party was afraid of them. The biggest mistake the Republican Party made in 2010 was not embracing them. I look back on that today and I’m more and more puzzled and amazed. Well, I’m not puzzled. I know why. But I’m just still amazed that they didn’t embrace it. I mean, here you have a made-to-order, motivated, energized, activist, willing-to-donate millions of people that you could welcome into the fold.
You could build a movement around them, and the Republican Party was as uninterested as the Democrats were interested in destroying them. I think that just fired up the Tea Party people even more. Then as time has gone on, the Tea Party people have figured out what others in the Republican base have figured out, and that is the Republicans are really not that crazy about ‘em being in the party, because they embarrass them, or something. ....”
BTTT
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