Posted on 07/30/2011 6:35:02 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
FORT WALTON BEACH — Al Kauses, chairman of the Florida Panhandle Patriots, stood over a hot grill slinging about 400 hamburgers, hot dogs and bratwurst at the second annual tea party picnic Saturday afternoon.
“It’s hot, humid – a good show,” he said, as a misting fan rotated nearby.
About 160 people gathered in the sweltering heat for the Reviving America Rally and picnic at Liza Jackson Park.
•View a slideshow from the event.
Despite the weather, Kauses said the turnout was significantly greater than last year.
“We’re looking up,” he said. “A lot more people are interested in what is going on in the world right now.”
Dozens of speakers took the modest stage to speak to the crowd huddled under a picnic pavilion. Topics ranged from the national debt crisis to “over-burdensome” regulation of the local fishing industry.
State Sen. Greg Evers spoke on the Second Amendment and changes to Florida’s gun laws. Later he posed for a photo with a life-size cardboard cutout of Sarah Palin.
Event coordinator Brenda Follis-Lenguel said the rally was an opportunity for local tea party members who regularly work together over the phone and on the Internet to meet face to face and learn about important issues.
“They get to talk and meet each other,” she said. “We give them food. And then we educate.”
Kauses said the picnic is another step in creating a unified voice for regional tea party activists.
“The larger that voice, the more they are going to listen — in Tallahassee as well as D.C.,” he said.
On Friday, the Panhandle tea parties launched an email campaign lambasting U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller for his vote in support of the debt-ceiling bill, Kauses said. They asked him to reconsider his position.
“I don’t think many people are happy with his vote,” he said.
A dozen groups had booths set up to sell wares or distribute information on various issues.
Okaloosa County Supervisor of Elections Paul Lux was on hand to register voters.
Duane Miller, chief operating officer of Proud Americans, a politically conservative senior citizens organization, drove from Houston to attend the event and spread the word about his organization’s health benefits program, which launched in June on his 65th birthday.
Karen Schoen handed out pamphlets and gathered petition signatures for her campaign to stop Agenda 21, which she says is a United Nations initiative to take over education in the United States.
“Information in schools is no longer American,” she said. “Our textbooks have been written by European socialists.”
Kathy Wiltsie won first place in the patriotic hat competition.
She hand-crafted her straw bowler hat with red, white and blue plastic flowers, a tiny American flag and a long, red feather boa.
Wiltsie has been a member of the Fort Walton Beach Tea Party since the first rally at Fort Walton Landing two years ago.
“I came out to be with my fellow Americans who have the same ideals that I possess: the love of my country,” she said. “I want to get as educated as I can.”
you notice they are all adults........
Wow. Those folks look dangerous.
John McCain’s Hobbits all. Makes me very angry the vicious smears from the left and RINO’s of these good American citizens.
160 people and 400 burgers??
Bomb throwers, one and all.
The only thing that will become obvious to these folks is only one party was trying to move thir issues forward and one party was doing everything to oppose who they are and what they stand for. We will see how they deal with it in the next election.
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