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LOL, “Organizers did everything they could to make it not political,” he said. “It’s too bad because it’s just the flag—it’s not about politics.” - let's see, the fund itself was started by a Republican lobbyist and operative, contributed towards in big sums from a few large donors like Bill Ackman (who has "come out" as a Trump supporter, shocker!) which is how it raised a crazy sum of a Half Million dollars for... a party... promoted by Donald Trump, the current Republican 2024 nominee, and apparently featuring VIP attendees like Texas Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw... could this be any more "political", let alone "Republican"?

The fact that out of 7000 invites distributed less than 1000 showed up *is* the story, and having read the NY Times piece that Olivia snarks at that actually covered some of the other various reasons for not attending from those who even participated in the original counter-protest, it was a combination of reasons: yes the obvious partisan political nature of it discussed here - that by attending one is endorsing Trump and the Republican Party, and by extension, their organizations if they were members of that probably wanted to avoid exactly that kind of politicking, that the organizers were very much making "the flag" a Republican enterprise... but there were also objections from some of the actual participants in the original counter-protest and member organizations that felt the party and its promoters were missing some of the larger points of the counter-protest and sidelined the Jewish aspect of it in favor of a "rah rah USA" take, or a "Left Versus Right" take, and others thought the notion of a party that cost, again, Half A Million Dollars was funds that could have been much better spent on various charities, some even suggested on a Gaza relief fund (which may conflict with the views assumed by those involved in the counter-protest about the conflict itself, versus the protests)... and maybe some of this was just a "miss" with youth culture, a party featuring Lee Greenwood (who is a Trump rally mainstay with mostly Boomer aged crowds and is probably not on the top list of a Gen Z crowd draw), along with what sounds like an exclusively country lineup otherwise may not have attracted a bigger crowd of "The Yoots", even with free beer, was there sort of an assumption that "frat bros", including Jewish ones, are heavily into country music and culture? And then Hooters waitresses... yeah, no offense, but this did seem to be a party put on by, and primarily for, former now middle aged frat "bros" wanting to re-live their "keg rager" days under the guise of a "patriotic" cause, in which the kids were mostly supposed to be the scenery for, and probably gave off a pretty ripe vibe of "Hey Fellow Kids!" meme-ishness.

I'm sure it was still a good time for those who attended, but yeah, the real story is why a "free rager" that cast a 7000 invite wide net wound up with less than 1000, and didn't even capture all of those who participated in the original protest, and how this might be sort of a window on the Republican/conservative "project" with Gen Z/youth might actually be going, outside of the window dressing of Trump doing podcasts with gamers and TikToks etc. From my experience, Gen Z is even when they can take some "left wing" and "right wing" viewpoints on various issues, or "code" left or right, their allegiance and support of both political parties is still pretty weak, so trying to turn a singular counter-protest move into a heavily coded partisan political event probably turned out exactly like anyone could have told the big check writers that it would have turned out like, a kind of embarrassing dud.