This story from Yahoo! news notes the following bit of information:
"A Washington Post poll taken last week showed that more people view the
[Tea Party] movement favorably than unfavorably -- and that 62 percent believe it has
either the right amount or not enough influence on the Republican Party."
Yet, when questioned about his own opinion of the Tea Party movement, President Obama explained that he regarded the "core" of the movement to be "on the fringe." He dismissed them as birthers or as wild-eyed crazies obsessed with proving his secret socialist connections. Mind you, Obama was quick to say that there is "a broader circle" around the core of the movement that
is what he deems "legitimate" in its concerns. But everyone knows that movements
move in keeping with their core; the core provides the general flavor and tenor of a movement. Would you eat an apple that you knew to be rotten at the core? Of course not.
So let's be clear about what Obama is doing here. He is positing two things to the American people. The first thing is that the core of the Tea Party movement is rotten. His second point is that the broader circle of the American people (that 62 percent who think the Tea Party either has the right amount or
not enough influence on the GOP) is laboring under a false understanding of the core of that movement. In other words, they are stupid.
It's an interesting and revealing way for a President to go about taking on his critics--particularly when there are so many of them and when "the core" of their dissatisfaction with him has to do with a piece of legislation which, he promises, we will come to "appreciate" once we are smart enough to understand it as he does. After all, he did it not because of "politics" but because it was "right."
That's certainly one way to go about persuasion . . . but a gentlemen generally seeks consent before the act, not after.
My recollection was that George W. Bush usually treated those who peacefully protested his policies (many of whom said or held despicable things) by commenting that he respected their rights to free speech and that he was proud to live in a country where people could express themselves. There is something ugly and self-regarding in Obama's reaction, like the rough and tumble of protest politics (including the crazy stuff from the fringes) is good enough for other politicians, but not nearly good enough for Obama.
I can't resist after that setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoyn_doplUM
In fairness to Bush the guy was released hours later without being charged with thought crime.
Here is what is going to happen over the next few months: The government has a real problem with the popularity of these protest groups. There are elements of them that call for end the fed, 911 truth, Obama conspiracies and possibly even some David Icke style reptillian stuff. The craziest elements are about to put front and center along with the dumbest people they can get on camera in order to scare more moderate and mainline people away and back into the loving arms of the right left paradigm. The government will probably blow up a building or something like that and then say they found Ron Paul literature in the scapegoat's truck. On the whole though, I don't understand while people are so afraid of the conspiracy theorists. The country never imploded almost 50 years after JFK. What is the worst that comes of these ideas: people think their government is full of lying criminals? Is that not what we think anyway?