In anticipation of the arrival of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, activists began to gather on Boston Common Wednesday morning.
Palin was slated to begin her remarks at 10:40 a.m., making Boston the final stop of the Tea Party Express before its close-out event in Washington, D.C. on Tax Day. The first Tea Party Express bus rolled into Boston before 8:00 a.m.
The early arrivals, at least, are looking forward to hearing Palin address the crowd, expected by organizers to be made up of up to 10,000 people. (Emphasis added.)
After the rally, via the right-wing propaganda daily newspaper, Washington Times:
“Is this what their ‘change’ is all about?” Mrs. Palin asked a sun-splashed crowd of roughly 5,000 gathered just a mile from the site of the original Boston Tea Party, from which the movement got its name. emphasis added.
Media Matters cites right-leaning Politico estimating the crowd to 3,000, while the Associated Press assessed it at “roughly 5,000 people” and the Boston Globe put the number at 6,000 — meanwhile, true to form, a right wing blogger simply made stuff up. Gateway Pundit’s Jim Hoft said the crowd was between 13,000 and 16,000, based on numbers provided by Ken Pittman, a right-wing radio host based in Boston.
I saw several aerial photos of the event, and none of them seemed to show even 3,000 attendees. There were anti-Tea Party people there serving tea and cookies , and I’m thinking that they probably counted them as members of the Palin group.