Palin Blasts Democrats at Tea Party Rally

SEARCHLIGHT, Nev. (March 27) -- Missy Montgomery leaned over to her blind, wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran husband and planted a huge kiss on his cheek as former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin climbed the dais on Saturday.

"What was that for?" a happily bewildered Don Montgomery asked over the din of cheering thousands.

"That's for the fact that we're taking our country back, starting now," his wife grinned, draping her arms over his shoulders. "That's for being here with me at this amazing event."

It wouldn't seem like the setting for a romantic date, this assemblage of several thousand conservatives on a dusty, wind-swept remote desert hillside a half-mile from the rural Nevada home of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. But for all the anger against the policies of the Obama administration that spurred these people to trek from across the Southwest for this tea party rally today, the dominating mood was joy, excitement and optimism that such events could turn the electoral tides against Democrats in November.

The "Showdown in Searchlight" kicked off a 44-city, three-week tour organized by the Tea Party Express that culminates in Washington, D.C., on Tax Day, April 15. The symbolism of Searchlight was hardly subtle, an effort to bring the fight against the Democratic agenda to the small town of 800 people about 50 miles south of Las Vegas seven months before Reid seeks re-election for a fifth term.

"If you watch the mainstream media, you'd think we're some kind of whack jobs, some sort of racist people," said Wendy Cappas, 61, of Las Vegas, toting a homemade sign that read, "Obama-Scare: Socialized Medicine Guaranteed to Kill You." "To come here and see how many people think like we do, how unified we all are, it's just a wonderful, wonderful feeling."

Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008, was the headliner of the event, which also included appearances by Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, a Republican running for re-election this year, candidates seeking to unseat Reid and Democratic Reps. Dina Titus and Shelley Berkley, both of Nevada. Several Republican challengers to Gibbons also took to the podium, although none attacked Gibbons.

"The big-government, big-deficit Obama-Reid-Pelosi spending spree is over," Palin shouted from the dais over a stiff, chilly wind. Referring to the gambling state from whence Reid comes, she went on: "This isn't a crapshoot, but a lot of this is crap, though."

The remarks from speakers all followed similar veins, attacking Obama and Reid as big-government tax-raisers who are robbing liberty via the recently passed health insurance reform bill and bankrupting the country. Across the flag-waving crowd, signs referred to Democrats as socialists and fascists, questioned Obama's citizenship and urged Reid's forced retirement. A fleet of planes that drew words in the crisp blue skies above sparked chants when they wrote "Vote Reid Out."

One speaker referred to the event as "the Woodstock you'll be able to remember," but the crowds were not in that league. Organizers suggested there might have been more than 10,000 people, but the numbers did not appear that high. Traffic was intense, though, because the event took place on a private plot of land along U.S. 95, a four-lane highway that is the only road in and out of Searchlight.

Leaders of the tea party effort went to great pains to emphasize from the podium how calm and peaceful the event was after a week during which Democrats accused other tea party advocates of spewing racial and homophobic slurs and inciting threats of violence against members of Congress. A sign at the entry gate read: "No Violence By T-Party! Violence Perpetrators Keep Out!"

"I don't want anything bad to happen to Harry except for him to lose his job," said Frank Helms of San Diego. "I don't think he's a bad man. He just ended up carrying Obama's water, and that's gonna do him in."

Palin herself pushed back against the notion that when she exhorted anti-Democratic activists, "don't retreat, reload," that she was inciting violence by using a word associated with guns.

"What we got here is a difference of opinion, but that's nothing a good, old-fashioned election can't fix," she said.

Reid, who was not in Searchlight on Saturday, issued a statement encouraging the tea partiers to patronize the area's businesses but also offered this shot: "This election will be decided by Nevadans, not people from other states who parachuted in for one day to have a tea party."