Georgians will be out in full force at government spending protest in D.C.

By Bob Keefe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

WASHINGTON — Maybe it was the lousy economy. Or the bout with breast cancer that gave her a taste of American health care. Or the conversations with her liberal friends that rattled her conservative bones until she could sit still no more.

Joy McGraw didn’t get involved in politics until last November’s presidential election, and never expected to become a political activist.

Yet Friday, the 48-year-old Atlanta real estate agent plans to lead a bus caravan of protesters from Georgia to Washington to participate in a giant march and rally against public health care, government spending, higher taxes — and most everything else that the Obama administration and the Democrat-led Congress are pushing these days.

“By going to D.C. ... I’m saying that we need to return to the roots on which this country was founded and get started again,” McGraw said. “This is about the policies of this administration and the corruption ... of government.”

McGraw and others from the Atlanta area are some of the thousands of Georgians expected to participate in the mainly grass-roots march and rally in Washington on Saturday.

In all, tens of thousands of people like McGraw — most middle Americans, most conservatives, all fed up with government spending and taxes and fearful of government-run health care — are expected to converge on the capital from every state.

“We are predicting the largest group of fiscal conservatives ever to gather in one place ... in the history of this country,” Matt Kibbe, president of activist group FreedomWorks, said Thursday at a pre-rally event in Washington. The group was started by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a Republican from Texas.

FreedomWorks is part of a loosely knit organization of conservative groups behind the planned Taxpayer March on Washington. Others include the Tea Party Patriots, which got its start in Atlanta and helped organize numerous “Tea Party” rallies across the country in recent months, and We the People Revolution, an organization started by conservative Atlanta radio talk show personality Joel Aaron.

Georgia will be front and center at the march — literally.

A group of Tea Party members from Savannah who also are Revolutionary War re-enactors is expected to lead a state-by-state procession of protesters on the nearly two-mile march to the U.S. Capitol. Plans call for protesters from Georgia to immediately follow the re-enactors, followed by the other states.

Critics say events like the protest are a distraction that’s stalling needed reforms, especially health care reform.

“In a lot of these protests, the fires have been fanned by misinformation,” said Jacki Schechner, communications director for Health Care for America Now, a lobbying group pushing for health care reform.

“But Congress has a very clear task ahead of it, and I think the majority of the country continues to support reform,” she said. “We’re on the right track, and we’re moving forward and we’re not going to get distracted ... by misinformation.”

The roots of the Washington rally reach back to Atlanta, organizers say.

Jenny Beth Martin, an Atlanta-area Republican activist and former paid Republican political consultant, teamed up with some like-minded friends to organize the first “Tea Party” rally against the Obama administration’s policies in Atlanta in February.

Since that first rally, more than 150 similar “Tea Party” events were held across the country, mainly in April and in August.

And with the involvement of the other groups, the “Tea Party” movement grew into the Washington march and rally.

“We stand for fiscal responsibility, limited government and free markets,” Martin said in Washington on Thursday. “It’s our government, not the politicians’ government.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Price of Roswell, who plans to speak at Saturday’s event, attributed the grass fire of conservative protest expected to culminate with Saturday’s rally to what he calls the Obama administration’s failure to live up to its promises.

“The word and the deed don’t match,” Price said Thursday. “And when that happens, you lose the trust of the American people. That’s what happened across the country the whole month of August, and that’s what’s happening here.”

At the White House, a spokeswoman had no immediate comment about the protest planned for Saturday.

But in an ironic twist that the Tea Party Patriots and others are likely to embrace, Obama did make an official proclamation on Thursday:

He officially declared Friday Patriot Day.

D.C. Rally

What: March and rally in Washington

When: Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. near the White House; concluding at 1 p.m. at the U.S. Capitol.

Who: Tens of thousands of protesters — including thousands traveling from Georgia — led and organized by several conservative groups.

Why: To protest government spending, increased taxes, plans for public health care and other Obama administration initiatives.