By James Renner

So, my old man is running for Congress.

District 6. That’s Mahoning County all the way to Athens. Charlie Wilson’s district. No, not that Charlie Wilson, not the one from the movie. A different dude. A “blue-dog” Democrat. My dad is running against him in the Democratic primary next May.

He has been talking about this for years. Started over the dinner table when I was in elementary school and he was working in the steel mills and we lived on a livestock farm in the boonies south of Ravenna. It was Glenn Beck that finally pushed him to it.

Yes, he’s a Democrat who loves Glenn Beck. Newsflash: there’s a bunch of them out there.

Love him or hate him, Glenn Beck is motivating the American public to action in a way we haven’t seen since the SDS protests of 1969. Beck is, in fact, the counterpoint to Obama, a so-called Libertarian who speaks eloquently and understands social media. A lot of people are making a big deal about advertisers jumping from his show right now (Independent staff writer Tim Russo, for one). But anyone with such a large and loyal fan base will never hurt for advertisers. Don’t expect him to go away anytime soon.

The reason Beck is resonating with people is because he is a new kind of conservative, the sort with a liberal heart. He battled alcoholism and was a drug abuser, and, unlike our most recent former President, doesn’t lie about. He learns from it.  The 9 Principals and 12 Values that shape Beck’s 9-12 Project echo Dr. Bob’s 12-step program, especially in its belief in a higher power and personal responsibility.

Earlier this year, my father stopped quoting Rush Limbaugh to me and started talking about this Beck, guy. When that happened, I noticed something else; instead of just being angry about the way things are, my dad was becoming politically active. He re-registered as a Democrat (“I’m not going to change my party just because my party changed,” he says. “I’m the kind of Democrat the Democrats are pretending to be.”) He started to pay attention to how his local representatives were (or were not) representing his community. He discovered Charlie Wilson. He did the type of research into Wilson’s campaign finance reports that local journalists should have done long ago, and discovered enough conflicts of interest to sour his stomach. Somewhere along the line, he realized he could do it better.

That’s the real difference between Limbaugh and Beck; Beck uses his show to affect change instead of just terrifying the American public (though, he does plenty of that, too).

So, when Beck asked his audience to show up in Washington D.C. on September 12 to protest Obama’s policies, over a million responded.

Over a million? I heard it was, like, 10,000 at most.

I’m being conservative when I say it was around a million. We spoke to on-site security at the Capitol. They estimated the crowd at 2 million. CNN was reporting 10,000. I’ve seen 10,000 people at Blossom. Trust me when I say it was at least a hundred times that. The experience made me a believer in this whole liberal media conspiracy. Why were some stations reporting 10,000 and others 2 million? How do you explain that if BOTH sides aren’t fiddling with the numbers in order to either downplay its impact or inflate it?

Anyway, my dad asked me to go, because Beck was saying to go, and so I went. Wanted to see what it was all about.

I support Health Care reform. I want Obama’s plan to pass. I know too many people without access to medical care. But, I do disagree with the dismantling of the free-market economy, higher taxes, chastising Joe Wilson for asserting his First Amendment right on the floor of Congress, and I’m for drilling anywhere and everywhere (there’s probably gas in my back yard, anyone have a backhoe?), so I could march along without feeling like a liberal spy.

It was the first time I’d been to Washington, I’m ashamed to say. First time I’d seen this center of American history outside Roland Emmerich movies and episodes of the X-Files. The 9-12’ers gathered in Freedom Plaza, not far from Fox Mulder’s old office at FBI headquarters. They arranged themselves into groups by state, and each was represented. And, contrary to what we often see on television and YouTube, the crowd was not an angry-seething mob of wackos (they were there, sure, and willing to tell you about fluoride’s mind control effects). Mostly, I found the crowd to be welcoming and ready to discuss their views on Health Care reform, civilly and intelligently.

Nearly everyone had constructed their own billboards. Somewhere along the line, these NEO-cons got good at this. Really good. There were photo-shopped pictures of Obama on Stalin’s body or signs that read: “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy”. Ouch. But there were also more clever statements such as giant credit cards from the “Bank of China” and signs simply asking Congress to “read the bill”, which, really is not too much to ask (I’m looking at you, Sherrod).

Also, I’ve been to liberal protests in Cleveland and at Kent State before. I have to say, the conservatives at least beat the liberals when it comes to one thing; the hotness of their foot soldiers. Kent State protests were always full of curly-haired patchouli-enfused young women who resemble the girl next door. The 9-12’ers have a seemingly-endless phalanx of straight-haired blondes in tight sweaters and pressed khakis who smell like Chanel. Unfortunately, you get the feeling they only go to second base on a first protest, whereas those Kent Stater girls always knew how to party.

But I digress.

As the crowd spilled down the street toward the Capitol, I realized something very strange about this crowd. At first, I couldn’t put my finger on it. It was only a feeling that something was off. Then, it donned on me; in this river of a million people, I didn’t see a single minority. Everyone was white. Not just white. But white, white, you know? I made a point, then, to count the number of African Americans I saw the rest of the day. I counted five. And one of those had been flown in to speak.

And there’s the rub.

Because, no matter what the reasoning, a million angry white people standing in front of a black man’s house never looks good.

The 9-12 movement will never really succeed unless they figure out a way to appeal to African Americans and Latino Americans. Obama, and Louis Stokes, for that matter, have learned to appeal to every race.

Disappointed as I was, the trip was fruitful if only for the chance to spend a five-hour car ride with a man who once worked late nights shaping Cleveland steel and who now believes enough in his country’s future and his own to try to change it for the better. And has time to talk to me about it. During that car ride, we mapped out his campaign strategy for the six months leading up to the primary.

“I’ll never beat Charlie with money,” my dad admits—not with the corporations shoving money into his pocket for their own interests. “We have to beat him with people.”

Luckily, as Glenn Beck and the Taxpayer March on Washington clearly show, such as thing is possible again.

Check it out: jimrennerforcongress.com