Tea Party Touts 'Maryland Miracle'

On a Wednesday evening after classes in College Park, Md., a group of about 20 college Republicans mill about in the Thurgood Marshall Room of the student union, waiting for congressional hopeful Charles Lollar to make an appearance.

“It’s more of a support group than a club,” a senior majoring in government says, describing the University of Maryland’s conservative scene.

Lollar, a Marine Corps Reserve major running in the 5th District’s Republican primary, is a mix of conservative candidate (“Everybody can’t go to college. If all of us go to college, who is paying the tuition? If all of us work for government, who is paying the paychecks?”) and motivational speaker (“The only difference between someone very successful and someone not successful is that that person who is successful got up one more time.”).

But Lollar has one more unique attribute: He’s an African-American tea partier.

Lollar regales the college kids with the travails of his youth, nuggets of inspiration about America’s Jeffersonian democracy and a line about voter frustration that sounds oddly reminiscent of Barack Obama.

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