Size does matter

The Palmetto Scoop's hanging out there again for peddling Uncle Grumpy's talking points as news. Friday he waxed lyrical thusly:

SC politico pulls off massive McCain event

By Adam Fogle | Fri, Sep 12, 2008 - 10:11 am | Posted in National news

WALKER HELPS PACK VIRGINIA PARK WITH 23,000 TO SEE MCCAIN, PALIN

South Carolina’s own Trey Walker, who is serving GOP presidential nominee John McCain as his regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic, was the mastermind behind Wednesday’s enormous .*

Here’s what The National Review’s Byron York wrote about the event:

When McCain and running mate Sarah Palin appeared this morning at Van Dyck Park, in the city of Fairfax, Virginia, the people spilled out of the natural amphitheater, over the sides, out the back, and nearly all the way to the Old Lee Highway.

The rally had originally been scheduled for Fairfax High School, but some school board members objected. With controversy brewing, the McCain campaign moved the event to the park.

It was a good idea; the high school facility could handle 6,500 people, which would have been a huge crowd in pre-Palin days. But today, the school wouldn’t have been nearly big enough.

After the rally, McCain officials told me 23,000 people had been there. Even if that estimate was a little high, it was still McCain’s biggest rally ever — and that, at mid-morning, on a weekday.

I guess that makes Walker a “community organizer” like Democrat Barack Obama — and quite a successful one, at that. Maybe he should run for president in eight years.

Turns out McCain's people are way inflating their numbers, and citing official sources who didn't provide any numbers in the first place:

McCain-Palin Crowd-Size Estimates Not Backed by Officials

By Lorraine Woellert and Jeff Bliss

Sept. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Senator John McCain has drawn some of the biggest crowds of his presidential campaign since adding Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to his ticket on Aug. 29. Now officials say they can't substantiate the figures McCain's aides are claiming.

McCain aide Kimmie Lipscomb told reporters on Sept. 10 that an outdoor rally in Fairfax City, Virginia, drew 23,000 people, attributing the crowd estimate to a fire marshal.

Fairfax City Fire Marshal Andrew Wilson said his office did not supply that number to the campaign and could not confirm it. Wilson, in an interview, said the fire department does not monitor attendance at outdoor events.

In recent days, journalists attending the rallies have been raising questions about the crowd estimates with the campaign. In a story on Sept. 11 about Palin's attraction for some Virginia women voters, Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher estimated the crowd to be 8,000, not the 23,000 cited by the campaign.

``The 23,000 figure was substantiated on the ground,'' McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said. ``The campaign is willing to stand by the fact that it was our biggest crowd to date.''

``Since day one, this campaign has been consistent that we're not going to win or lose based on crowd size but the substance of John McCain's record,'' Bounds said.

Town Hall Meetings

Until Palin, 44, joined him on the campaign trail, McCain, 72, had limited his political events to smaller town hall meetings and rallies of a few hundred people. His Democratic rival, Barack Obama, an Illinois senator, routinely draws thousands of people to his speeches, a phenomenon McCain has tried to use to his advantage by labeling Obama, 47, a celebrity.

That changed on Aug. 30, at Palin's first big public appearance after her nomination. The McCain campaign said 10,000 people showed up at the Consol Energy Arena in Washington, Pennsylvania, home of the Washington Wild Things baseball team.

The campaign attributed that estimate, and several that followed, to U.S. Secret Service figures, based on the number of people who passed through magnetometers.

``We didn't provide any numbers to the campaign,'' said Malcolm Wiley, a spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service. Wiley said he would not ``confirm or dispute'' the numbers the McCain campaign has given to reporters.

To contact the reporters on this story: Lorraine Woellert in Washington at lwoellert@bloomberg.net; Jeff Bliss in Washington at jbliss@bloomberg.net.

Of course, as Earl Capps argues, big crowds don't prove you're a good candidate- but if you're a Democrat it may suggest you're a Nazi.

*sic, and we don't mean willie