The White House, most Congressional Democrats, and their useful idiots in the media just don’t get it. Matt Welch’s article in the NY Post titled The Real Reason Americans Are Angry makes the case quite easily:
An ABC/Washington Post poll from June showed people preferred “smaller government with fewer services” over “larger government with more services” by 54% to 41%, up from 50%-45% a year earlier (independents were even more pronounced, at 61%-35%). A Rasmussen poll from April showed that 77% of Americans preferred a “free market” economy over a “government managed” economy, up seven percentage points from just last December. A July CBS poll found that 52% of Americans think that Obama is trying to do “too much.”
After 11 months of federal bailouts and freakouts, Americans have become bone tired of panicky power grabs from Washington. It’s the big government, stupid.
You can run but you can’t hide:
It’s not just the boardroom that faces intrusion. Kitchens everywhere should beware Obama’s head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, former New York City health commissioner Thomas Frieden, who may ban trans fats and require calorie counts nationally. Obama’s chief consumer protection advocate at the Federal Trade Commission is a former Ralph Nader employee who wants to sue companies that don’t receive consumer complaints, and his antitrust chief thinks that Google is a prime target for government prosecution.
Inside most Americans beats the heart of a Libertarian. Yet we elect both Republicans and Democrats who expand the role of Government, and then we complain.
No wonder their programs are consistently last in the ratings. Maybe they know their target demographic and are content to appeal only to moonbats. I’m sure GE’s shareholders must be thrilled with the performance of this business unit.
Update:Allahpundit at Hot Air makes this point about MSNBC’s round-the-clock commitment to the truth:
For all the well-deserved heat that MSNBC’s primetime line-up has taken for its demagoguery — Maddow has been notably egregious during the health-care blowup — this proves that they’re not above pulling this crap during their daytime “hard news” segments either.
When you’re done with the clip, scroll through the new photo gallery Zombie’s put together of the many, many, many “Kill Bush” signs at leftist protests over the past eight years. Thank goodness outlets like MSNBC and the Huffington Post took such “blunt, no-argument stances” against that sort of insanity at the time.
By claiming she can feel global warming when she flies, Debbie Stabenow, Democrat from Michigan, has stepped up to the plate to challenge Babs Boxer as one of the Senate’s dimmest bulbs. As Michelle Malkin points out, let’s see which SNL comedian will play Debbie Stabenow. Of course I am sure none of us will hold our breath waiting for the program to puncture one of the left’s sacred cows. Better odds waiting for them to create a skit with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin before a “Death Panel”.
So there you have it Debbie. Things are no worse than normal. We don’t expect you to be a weather or climate expert, but we do expect you’ll know when you’re making an idiot out of yourself.
More orchestrated theater to help propagate the lie that the American public wants the President’s vision of health care reform, now. As Michelle Malkin points out in Little girl at Obama town hall has not-so-random political connections, “There are no coincidences in Obama world.”
Is the White House even listening to the American people on this issue? Do they really think we’ll not see through this obviously transparent staged media event? Even the location was carefully chosen – close enough to deep blue Massachusetts to ensure a friendly audience, but not within the state itself, as Charles Arlinghaus of the Union Leader points out in Why Obama spoke in NH and not next door:
The President decided to speak on government health care plans in New Hampshire because each of the neighboring states has had a failed experiment with exactly the kind of changes Washington wants to bring to all of us.
None of the rhetoric in the President’s speech was new to New Englanders. All of it is eerily reminiscent of the hopes and dreams of Dirigo Choice in Maine and Commonwealth Care in Massachusetts. Both of those plans went into effect, and neither has proved effective, which makes it odd that Congress and the President wish to develop a plan by copying the broad outlines of the “Massachusetts model.”
I doubt anyone will be fooled by this. The debate is over, and proponents of sweeping reform and nationalized care are simply losing credibility.
Congressional democrats are almost frozen like a deer in headghts. In his Washington Examiner column Democrats flummoxed by health care protests, Michael Barone describes the condescending attitude among Congressional leaders pushing health-care reform. Referring to USA Today op-ed by By Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer that includes the sentence “Health care is complex,” Barone writes:
To paraphrase another common saying: It’s a complex thing; you wouldn’t understand. You should listen docilely and take instruction from your betters. Or as Senator Clair McCaskill said at the beginning of a town hall meeting in Poplar Bluff, Missouri today (I was listening to the audio while preparing to appear on Fox News, asking members of the audience, “How many of you are so angry you can’t think straight?” The condescending implication is that if you could think straight, you’d support my position. Or recall what Barack Obama said campaigning in Virginia August 6: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them just to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess.”
As Ring Lardner once wrote, describing a flummoxed father. “’Shut up,’ he explained.”
They really do think we’re incapable of understanding the issues, so they cling to the ridiculous myth that the protests are un-American, hoping their friends in the media will pick up the message and use it to calm the disturbed public. Barone suggests it won’t work this time:
The Democrats are spoiled because they are used to a mainstream media who spin things their way and a general public whose only expressions of spontaneous enthusiasm in 2006-08 were opposition to (if not hatred of) George W. Bush and support of Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates. Now the spontaneous enthusiasm is all on the other side, with the Democratic astroturf efforts producing pathetic turnouts and largely spontaneous opposition to the Democratic health care plans producing large turnouts.
Is there a graceful way out for congressional democrats and the president? You can bet they are looking for some means of saving face. Maybe a watered-down bill with some reforms, either without the public option or one that is curtailed. One thing is for sure – the desire to be re-elected will trump any policy initiative.
Once again, Senator Barbara “Ma’am” Boxer displays how mind-numbingly stupid she thinks the American public is:
Imagine ordinary people showing up for meetings with their elected representatives dressed in good clothes! Maybe they just wanted to look nice and show some respect for whom they were meeting with. Wait, this can’t be – ordinary people dress down to meet with government officials. Well, what about protesters in her own jurisdiction? Gay Patriot points out to the Senator that by her standards any of her dressed-down protesting constituents must have an independent viewpoint (click on the link to see the photos mentioned in the quote below):
Now, if Ma’am claims the protesters are too well-dressed to be sincere, let me show her a few pictures from protests in her own jurisdiction, i.e., California (taking at the April 15 Tea Parties in Santa Monica and Van Nuys). Since they’re not wearing suits and ties, will she now take these protesters seriously?
Unfortunately by echoing the already failed “evil insurance companies and republicans are agitating against Obamacare” meme, Senator Boxer’s staggeringly limited intelligence is on display again. Look Babs, here’s a clue: Americans are very skeptical about Obamacare and don’t want it shoved down their throats. Read the polls. Do your job and talk with your constituents.
The elected and unelected officials in the White House and Congress and their useful idiots in the media who are attempting to propagate the ridiculous “outside agitators” myth can’t even fabricate a credible story. Allahpundit’s post at Hotair titled Revealed: Left’s dishonesty about Republican “mobs” somehow even worse than thought sums it up:
So it came to be that a guy no one’s heard of, who created a memo that was sent to 10 people, who once wrote a single post for a site that’s not even formally connected to a major conservative group, and who’s not even a Republican became the evil mastermind behind a national Republican conspiracy to “manufacture outrage” at town halls from coast to coast.
They really do think we’re stupid, and that through media manipulation using a transparently absurd story we’ll all fall in line. Hey Babs (and Senator Specter and others) – do you really hold us in that much contempt?
UPDATE: Exurban League has published a handy guide to Boxer-appropriate protest-wear!