Akin, Graves & Luetkemeyer Sign On To Tea Party Resolution With Inflated Praise

Fox News whips up the 9/12 crowd

Reps. Todd Akin, Sam Graves and Blaine Luetkemeyer have signed on to a Congressional resolution "expressing gratitude and appreciation to the individuals and families who participated in the Taxpayer March on Washington on September 12, 2009."

The resolution is harmless enough, and gives a chance for the three to build some cred with the tea partiers (who get no love from Jo Ann Emerson or Roy Blunt), but includes some obviously inflated estimates of how many people were actually at the 9/12 event. 

From TPM Live Wire:

The 9/12 march's headcount has been a matter of some debate, though the resolution's contention that there were "hundreds of thousands" who attended is many, many times higher than the estimates of mainstream media organizations...

The resolution also says crowd estimates "range as high as 1,700,000 marchers" -- an inflated number that Glenn Beck has advanced but that is 200,000 higher than the 1.5-million figure that march organizer FreedomWorks first claimed -- and then later had to cut by half.

Back in the real world, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services estimated the crowd was "in excess of 75,000," and ABC News reported that "approximately 60,000 to 70,000" attended.

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