http://www.americanthinker.com/assets/3rd_party/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/05/operation_american_spring_falls_short_of_expectations.htmlMay 17, 2014
'Operation American Spring' falls short of expectations
Rick Moran
"Operation American Spring" has been in the works for six months. The plan called for 10 million patriots to descend on Washington, oust leaders like Barack Obama and John Boehner. and force a return to constitutional government.
The event, scheduled for this weekend, failed to attract even a tiny fraction of 10 million, with hundreds showing up for a march to the White House:
“It’s a very dismal turnout,” said Jackie Milton, 61, a Jacksboro, Texas, resident and the head of Texans for Operation American Spring, to The Washington Times. He said hopes were high when he arrived in Alexandria, Va., a day or so ago and found motels and hotels were sold out for 30 miles around.
But weather’s dampened turnout a bit, he said.
“We were getting over two inches of rain in hour in parts of Virginia this morning,” Mr. Milton said. “Now it’s a nice sunny day. But this is a very poor turnout. It ain’t no millions. And it ain’t looking like there’s going to be millions. Hundreds is more like it.”
Operation American Spring was billed as far back as six months ago as a rally call for patriotic Americans to force leaders in Washington, D.C., to return to a more limited and constitutional style of governance — and to oust those leaders who weren’t listening. Among the group’s targets: Mr. Obama and Mr. Boehner, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, vice president Joe Biden and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Initial projections were for between 10 million and 30 million to come from around the nation and converge on the downtown capital city streets outside the White House and Capitol Building — a number the organizer of the event, Army Col. Harry Riley, called optimistic yet doable, given one million militia had already agreed to come.
Mr. Riley’s reasons for the event, as stated in previously published accounts: “We are calling for [their] removal … as a start toward constitutional restoration. They have all abandoned the U.S. Constitution, are unworthy to be retained in a position that calls for servant status.”
On Friday, the mission may have been the same — but the body count hardly as expected or wished.
“This is very disappointing,” Mr. Milton said, speaking of the numbers who showed so far, while marching to the White House. “I’ve been taking to everybody for six months, telling them to come and telling them if it’s not realistic to get to D.C., … well then, go to your county courthouse [and protest].”
Certainly, it's a worthy goal to attempt to force politicians to follow constitutional principles in making law. But for the overwhelming majority of Americans, it's a huge sacrifice for them to leave work and family for a weekend trip to DC. Expecting 10 million people to drop everything and come to Washington was unrealistic and the group has left themselves open to ridicule despite the serious nature of their protest.
But the second part of the protest was not only unrealistic, but dangerous:
We are calling for [their] removal … as a start toward constitutional restoration. They have all abandoned the U.S. Constitution, are unworthy to be retained in a position that calls for servant status.”
Obama, Biden, Boehner, McConnell, Pelosi - you can't just wish these people away. Just how was the "removal" to occur? One assumes that 10 million people in Washington would be very intimidating, but did organizers really expect all of these politicians to resign peacefully? And did organizers think that President Obama would do nothing? The army would almost certainly be called out to protect the government.
This is not how the US works. We do not have government by the mob. We have elections to "oust" bad politicians. And if someone in Texas doesn't like people in Ohio sending John Boehner back to Washington, it is constitutionally none of their business.
As for President Obama and Vice President Biden, why abandon the constitutional way of changing a president through impeachment? How can you march on Washington to restore constitional principles and then tear the constitution up by ignoring what the document requires in removing a president and vice president?
It's this kind of incohernece that has made the march a failure.
You can't claim the high ground of constitutional restoration by doing everything that document was set up to prevent. Blood in the streets is a useless sacrifice when peaceful, constitutional measures are available to effect the same sort of changes desired by protestors. If mob rule were confirmed and protestors got everything they wanted, what's to prevent liberals from organizing a march of 10 million to change things right back? That's the kind of chaos we could expect if organizers had been successful in their efforts.
