The hundreds of tea party protesters who gathered on Capitol Hill Tuesday were shuffling away from a series of speeches from lawmakers and organizers, all panning health care reform, when one final, unscheduled speaker grabbed the megaphone.
Charles Lollar, a Maryland Republican running for Congress against House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., jumped up on a bench and gave the most impassioned and well-received speech of the day.
Lollar didn’t focus much on the specific issue of health care. Instead, he gave a broad rallying cry for what he thinks the tea party movement is all about by evoking America’s founding fathers.
“When our founders arrived here, they had no developer to build them a home, they had no Bank of America to give them a loan and they had no public option to cover them,” Lollar said. “They understood, if you give us our freedom, if you leave our money alone, we will build the greatest nation on God’s green earth.”