With one of America’s leading orators/thinkers, Dennis Prager, serving as the anchor, normally underground conservatives emerged from their Los Angeles hideouts yesterday afternoon to frolic for four hours in the liberal sunshine adjacent to one of the Westside’s busiest intersections.
On the kelly green lawn of the Federal Building for a large, boisterous but tidy Wake Up, America rally, sponsored by various Tea Party clubs, at least 10 signs suggested this was a conservative event rather than a Democrat promotion.
• The grounds were flooded with normal looking, normal behaving people.
• No anger.
• No mockery.
• No vulgarities.
• Families with normal looking children who romped about in a safe-as-home environment.
• Everyone present had a job. No one was grubbing for a handout.
• 99 percent of the women wore wedding rings. No scowling, strangely attired, man-loathing women in sight.
• Patriotic signs, songs and dress abounded.
• No teleprompters were on the grounds.
• The all-day mood only was upbeat, with a concentration on Mitt Romney rather than President Obama’s failures.
Who knew there were so many Republicans in Los Angeles, where, for decades, Republicans only have been allowed to breathe outdoors if Democrats grant express permission?
Had it not been for the obvious giveaways just listed, there were so many people (several thousand) you would have sworn a wily Democrat was at the bottom of the pile.
The Backers
Political activist Jeffers Dodge of PopModal Videos and Mark Sonnenklar, who founded the Hancock Park Patriots two years ago this month, co-produced the terrifically successful afternoon that drew a wave of Orange County Republicans, too.
Rising and established conservative media stars monopolized the stage, not candidates – but the day was won, at the end, most impressively by the extraordinary Mr. Prager’s 21-minute oration.
He was welcomed as a hero astride a virginally vanilla steed, and he did not disappoint.
Tall and strapping with a full head of snow white hair, impeccably rather than casually dressed, his penchant for piercing moral insights, flown to his listeners via world class articulation, sent the crowd home on fire.
The Left’s Reply to Religion
The speech was tethered to a central Prager theory:
The frustrated, generally irreligious Left, hungering for its own trinity to neutralize Christianity’s, now has carved out a homemade trinity – race, gender, class that informs their entire populist philosophy that substitutes the heart for the mind as the driving instrument.
He opened gently. “My friends, we are supposed to be non-existent in Los Angeles. Republicans are supposed to not exist. Conservatives are supposed to be somewhere within the LaBrea tarpits.
“That is the assumption, and they are wrong. Many of us are here, and we are going to assert ourselves intellectually and morally, passionately, emotionally and sophisticatedly.”
One of the Right’s main complaints about their opponents is that they emote rather than thoughtfully reserving time to study and digest candidate and proposition information.
The Blaze Begins
Almost line by line, he ignited approving howls from the admiring crowd.
“It is a shame,” Mr. Prager said, warming to a peak, “that people don’t understand the issues.
“I am convinced that in the vast majority of cases that people vote Democratic for emotional rather than intellectual or moral reasons.
“When the President goes from (college) campus to campus, it is a given that young people will vote for him.
“I don’t know,” said the nationally syndicated radio 870 talk show host, “of a more dishonest appeal than the Democratic party’s appeal to young Americans.
“It is unbelievable.
“Democratic, left-wing, liberal policies have so hurt young Americans.
“There is no answer to what I am about to say – the mountain of debt (they will face).
“I don’t know how (the President) can go to a young American, look him or her in the face, and say, ‘Vote for my party.’
“It takes such chutzpah.
“‘We are saddling you with the debt of the most narcissistic generation in American history – vote for us!’
“It is astonishing,” Mr. Prager said. “I both laugh and cry. I prefer to laugh, but it is not laughable.
“‘Vote for us who are making your future the first one less well off than previous generations.’
“‘Vote for us because we will let you live with your parents until you are 26.’ That’s the great argument that is given.
“The other way is college tuition. ‘We are saddling you with unthinkable debt – astronomical sums you or your parents are supposed to pay, both of you going into debt. And do you know why there is so much debt, staggering sums to universities with giant endowments?
“Government.
“When the government says ‘we will cover your loans,’ tuition goes up.
“Can only a Republican mind understand that?” Mr. Prager asked. Glancing at the sprawling campus to his right, he added:
“I have to believe even a UCLA economics student can understand that.”
