What's behind the Wizard of Oz's curtain?

The much-vaunted "restoring honour" rally, hosted by US conservative commentator Glenn Beck and bankrolled by far-right billionaires, drew an estimated 87,000 people, according to CBS News.

Beck controversially organised the event to coincide with the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, which the civil rights leader delivered on the same spot 47 years ago.

Despite the Fox News pundit's claim that the rally was not political, the politics were clear. Among the major speakers were icons of the Republican Party, including former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin and FreedomWorks' Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader.

Then there was the politics of race and racism. Whether or not Beck and his corporate puppet masters deliberately chose the August 28 date with this in mind, it certainly became their conscious choice to manipulate the significance.

The 1963 March on Washington for jobs and freedom was a coalition effort that brought together black and white, Latinos, Asian-Americans and Native Americans along with United Auto Workers members, public workers and other union members, civil rights groups, religious leaders and believers of all faiths and Hollywood stars as well.

Beck's rally was overwhelmingly white, yet Beck claimed the mantle of the civil rights movement.

"We are the people of the civil rights movement," he outrageously declared.

"We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice. We are the inheritors and protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it," he said, sounding like a plaintiff in a "reverse racism" court case.

Organisers of the carefully staged rally were clearly on the defensive about being considered a racist movement.

They undoubtedly worried that if anti-Obama signs and speeches filled the National Mall it would doom the Republicans' hopes of a November triumph.

US citizens of all colours are disgusted by what is widely perceived as the Tea Party/Fox News/Wall Street movement's racism towards the nation's first African-American president and towards African-Americans as a people.

They are repulsed by Latino and immigrant-bashing, and the new crop of Rupert Murdoch media-created Islamophobia. And perhaps they considered the reality that President Obama enjoys 90-plus per cent approval ratings among African-Americans, a major voting block.

Did the organisers think that making it religious could bring more of the Republican-leaning Evangelicals back into the largely secular Tea Party fold and get them mobilised for November?

That's another voting block the organisers may have had their eye on. It seems what was once the backbone of the Republican grass-roots effort - the Christian Coalition and such - has taken second seat to the more libertarian, conspiracy theorist, anti-government Tea Party.

Did the organisers choose to "honour" the troops because the Republicans have lost much support among military families?

The GOP base in the military has shrunk due to failures like Iraq and veterans' care, while at the same time, President Obama's support among servicemen and women has strengthened. Perhaps the rally speakers thought a few demagogic speeches would undo all the damaging policies.

What the rally boiled down to was November mid-term election posturing. In a bid to claim the country's grass roots, the ultra-right GOP Tea Party is trying to show a much bigger base than perhaps it really has. Like the man behind the curtain portraying the Wizard of Oz as all-powerful, is it really a humbug?

It is possible to expose them as such.

Saturday's Glenn Beck-Sarah Palin spectacle, and the Republican/Wall Street-supported coalition behind it, has real limits. It represents only a small section of US society.

Some of the people caught up in this ultra-right movement are looking for answers to real-life problems they have. And some - not the majority - are working-class people who will never find solutions, especially to economic problems, in such a movement.