Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe:
For months, voters have been signaling their discontent with the president, his party, and their priorities; in less than a week, they appear poised to deliver a stinging rebuke. Yet rather than address the voters’ concerns with seriousness and respect, too many Democrats and their allies on the left have chosen instead to slur those voters as stupid, extremist, or too scared to think straight.
Well, let’s be fair, Jeff: it ain’t solely Democrats doing the sneering. In fact, some “pragmatic” conservatives seem so concerned that the Dems will lump them in with the “stupid, extremist, or too scared to think straight,” that they’ve gone out of their way to try to problematize (if not outright sabotage) the campaigns of certain Tea Party candidates (all while claiming that, naturally, they support the movement).
No, really, I’ve seen it!
But please continue:
[…]
The smug condescension in this — We’re losing because voters are panicky and confused — is matched only by its apparent cluelessness. Does Obama really believe that demeaning ordinary Americans is the way to improve his party’s fortunes? Or that his dwindling job approval is due to the public’s weak grip on “facts and science’’ and not, say, to his own divisive and doctrinaire performance as president?
Perhaps he does. Or perhaps he just says such things when speaking to liberal donors. It was at a San Francisco fundraiser in 2008 that Obama described hard-pressed citizens in the small towns of Pennsylvania as “bitter’’ people who “cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them . . . as a way to explain their frustrations.’’
Obama is far from alone in looking down his nose at the great unwashed. Last month, Senator John Kerry explained that Democrats are facing such headwinds these days because voters are easily swayed dolts: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth.’’
Meanwhile, the rise of the Tea Party movement, one of the most extraordinary waves of civic engagement in modern American politics and a major driver of the 2010 election season, has drawn no end of scorn from Democrats and their cheerleaders in the media.
— again, I hate to interrupt. But that scorn is not exclusive to Democrats and the media.
Plenty of Republican realists — the kinds who think that having a majority with R’s in front of their names is the only real goal of politics (and who sneer at those who insist that having the proper principles is more important than a willingness to wear a flag pin, or have the correct letter in front your name — derisively labeling these people “purists”) — worry terribly that the left will “laugh” at certain of the Tea Party candidates. And that reflects poorly on them, who — they swear! — are very bright people who just happen to hold certain conservative ideas on government, and who therefore would make wonderful additions to the Beltway circle, if only they were invited! Really. Good men, all!
— And besides, who do these nobodies in the Tea Party think they are, running for office without GOP party vetting and approval? I mean, it’s like the proles think just anybody is allowed into government!
Sniff.
Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray calls Tea Party members “nutcases,’’ while ABC’s Christiane Amanpour is aghast that the grassroots movement has “really gone to the extreme’’ and is “not conservatism as we knew it.’’ Rob Reiner even smears the Tea Party as Nazi-esque: “My fear is that the Tea Party gets a charismatic leader,’’ the Hollywood director said last week. “All they’re selling is fear and anger and that’s all Hitler sold.’’ And the crop of citizen-candidates running for Congress this year, many of them with Tea Party backing? A “myriad of wackos,’’ sneers the influential liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas.
Trashing conservatives as “nutcases’’ and “wackos’’ — or worse — is all too common among left-wing pundits and politicos. But the electorate isn’t buying it. “Likely voters in battleground districts,’’ reports The Hill in a recent story on a poll of 10 toss-up congressional districts across the country, “see extremists as having a more dominant influence over the Democratic Party than they do over the GOP.’’ Among likely voters, 44 percent think the Democratic Party is overpowered by its extremes (37 percent say that about the Republicans). Even among registered Democrats, 22 percent think their party is too beholden to its extremists.
Heading into next week’s elections, Americans remain a center-right nation, with solid majorities believing that the federal government is too intrusive and powerful, that it does not spend taxpayer’s money wisely or fairly, and that Americans would be better off having a smaller government with fewer services. Nearly halfway through the most left-wing, high-spending, grow-the-government presidential term most voters can remember, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that so many of them are rebelling. The coming Republican wave is an entirely rational response to two years of Democratic arrogance and overreach. As the president and his party are about to learn, treating voters as stupid, malevolent, or confused is not a strategy for victory.
— Sure. But sadly, it doesn’t hurt you if you’re a “conservative” political pundit — provided you give yourself room to backtrack and rationalize and pretend that you’ve been correct all along.
It’s the American way.
PURGE! PURITY!
Someone like O’Donnell may be a little loopy, but when the feckless establishment anoints poofters like Castle rather than seeking out and cultivating sharper candidates who reflect the will of the people, it’s on them. They seem to suffer from the same myopic arrogance as their compatriots on teh left.
Damned sockpuppet.
the president what won a mandate “to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term” is about to face a political force determined to “roll back spending to 2008 levels”
This is very exciting.
If one could just hold spending at today’s levels, without any increases at all for any reason, we could get out of this mess. The problem is, statists on both sides like to spend money they don’t have.
Though I wouldn’t care to argue you out of the “hold for now” position cranky-d, I’d bet dollars to doughnuts you’d be with me suggesting that cutting deeply, or even cutting merely noticeably, would get us where we ought to go all the faster — therefore would be the better path out of the economic doldrums in which we find our country. Cut spending, cut regulations even more, pledge certainty in future cuts to come and stand out of the way.
Hitler wasn’t a salesman; he was an unemployed painter.
Did someone just compare Tea Party activists to Hitler? Isn’t comparing people to Hitler inherently racist, or is that only the case when your target is a black man?
Some spending will be difficult if not impossible to cut before 2012 without a supermajority in both houses, and probably difficult after that.
BTW, the “hold for now” was backed up with some data somewhere, but I cannot link to it. It also assumes a certain amount of revenue that I cannot quote, so it’s a prediction only. I believe that it said that if you cut spending to 2007 levels and held there, you could have a budget in the black by 2015 or so, and if you held at current levels, 2019 or so. That is probably not soon enough for some people, and in fact isn’t soon enough for me, but I see it as more do-able.
I want to see little to no business taxes (hard to accomplish I’m sure), which I consider to just be a way to tax everyone and somehow act like you’re sticking it to business, regulations cut way back, and some strong assurance that no one will screw with taxes and regulations for a while. As Ric has said, it’s the certainty that the government is going to screw with taxes and regulation that is keeping businesses from forming or expanding, or even staying in business at all.
Two of the three main players think the sales staff underperformed.
While the third wants it to be all about him.
I’m fine with both views. Say it loud and make it all about Obama, please.
Dan Mitchell made an online video touching on the “hold for now” point cranky-d. I’ll see if I can dig it up.
“Did someone just compare Tea Party activists to Hitler?”
We’re being too hard on all the Hitler comparisons. He’s the only historical figure the Left can vaguely recall and conjure in any discourse. That is, besides Nixon.
After all, they’re all products of the NEA. The rest of us escaped by the grace of growing up around home libraries with dusty outmoded broken-spine books, tomes, volumes, compleat works, compendia and yellow paged/ missing page paperbacks. I even remember a set of encyclopedias taking up valuable real estate. I -really- wish I hadn’t stopped in the middle of B…
Do HMTL tags work here, or are they the tool of progressive media?
Found that Mitchell video.
Here ’tis.
oops, didn’t refresh I didn’t. sorry
Hmmm. I’m assuming hold for now didn’t encompass Obamacare?
Team R has never show anything remotely close to the sort of staunchy fortitude what would be required to repeal Obamacare.
Along with anger Hitler also sold hope…does that sound familiar?
Does Obama really believe that demeaning ordinary Americans is the way to improve his party’s fortunes? Or that his dwindling job approval is due to the public’s weak grip on “facts and science’’ and not, say, to his own divisive and doctrinaire performance as president?
Perhaps he does. Or perhaps he just says such things when speaking to liberal donors.
Good grief, Jacoby. You’ve been examining the Left long enough to know that they very much do believe that their opponents are possessed of false consciousness.
They denigrate the voters because when the pressure is on, they can’t help but blurt out what they are really thinking. It makes them feel better to reassert their superiority, because the alternative is introspection, and we can’t have that.
Thanks, guys, that was the video I saw as well. As I said, I advanced it because I think it could work. Maybe that’s too pragmatic of me, because I would much rather see some drastic cuts right now, and have people get used to not getting money from the government, because sooner or later they won’t get it no matter what.
Hold for now would mean not funding Obamacare, hf.
would it sound panicky if I said we’re doomed?
cause I should like it to sound panicky I think
I agree that we’re doomed, but today I’m trying to be a little optimistic.
I’m not sure why, really.
cranky-d – because Eyoring is for the weak at heart. If I can laugh when told I am in the midst of a minefield, halfway up a cliff along the Panjshir River (and I am not a brave person, but do have a most excellent sense of the ridiculous) you can feel good about what is happeninng, and going to happen November 2nd…
Stuff like that does put things in perspective, LTC.
I’ve been a Tea Partier from the beginning, as one of those libertarian-small government-fiscally responsible types, and I have to say that the constant barrage of insult regarding the Tea Party from media tools and fools like Rob Reiner – and all the others quoted in this post – is getting … well, I wouldn’t say hard to take, exactly. But there is a whole raft of oft-quoted media, entertainment, and political figures that in future will have absolutely zilch credibility with me. I will not read them, watch them, buy their DVDs – or pay them any mind whatsoever.
Does Obama really believe that demeaning ordinary Americans is the way to improve his party’s fortunes
Turns out, that’s all he’s ever had. But – to hell with the real world – he hasn’t noticed that he’s totally dependent upon his fantasy that everyone else is stupid, to prove that he is brilliant. The Teleprompter hasn’t clued him in yet.
Not to worry, feets. You’ve got blind panic nailed.
okeydoke I don’t want to oversell it
I think you’ve got oversold nailed, too.
“I think you’ve got oversold nailed, too,” Mr. Slarticus said wistfully. He hadn’t always been such a bitter bitter fellow, but the memories of that time before were grown distant and dim. Perhaps a splash of that tasty piss-coloured rum he’d found the other day would help him remember.
He’d liked the way it burned going down.
More smug.
I saw Mother Jones on the status bar and had half the article written in my head before the page loaded. Could these smug bastards be any more pedestrian?
This is another of those word problems.
For this question the limit is a sideways eight.
Any question why Bush called Rove turd blossum? He couldn’t call Putin right but boy did he have Rove’s number.
Oh, now you folks have me reading articles at Mother Jones. Thanks a lot for that. Look what I just learned:
They’re a bargain! More
“And Social Security prevents poverty. It’s wealth, exactly like a big bond that you can’t sell. If the monthly benefit is $1,000 and the interest rate is 2 percent, the bond is worth $600,000—and that’s a bond you own, right now. You don’t have to save for it: You’ve paid for it, up front, via the payroll tax.”
I just don’t know where to begin…
First, the 600 grand isn’t really there, only some t-bills of questionable worth; it’s just Uncle sugar writing more checks that he eventually won’t be able to cover.
But further, imagine if it were a provate savings account with 600k in it. To start, there are many instutitions that will safely pay more than 2%. But more importantly, you could safely recieve double that amount in disbursements for more than 25 years and not deplete the principal.
A ponzi scheme that makes Madoff look like a piker.
I could go on, but this morning I’m just not into it…
Someone over at Mother Jones forgot to notice that SS is a mandatory budget item.
Horribly misleading and inaccurate. SS is something that Congress doesn’t choose to fund; it has to choose not to fund it. It is defaulted on.
Level of benefits is subject to change, but it takes an act of Congress to make that happen, which is just as hard as it sounds.
Not that I’m advocating doing away with SS; just advocating some degree of accuracy in the conversation.
Carin, d’ja notice Mara attempting to spin the tax saving of a participant in an FSA as a government subsidy last night, and being promptly slapped down by Dr K and Hayes? Pretty funny stuff I thought.
OMG, we were hooting and hollaring about that one, sdferr! My husband rewinded and listened to it twice.
He thought that Mara was misunderstanding where the HSA funding came from and I had to explain to him that many libs advocate that tax “breaks” are the same thing as subsidies. As the Hammer explained, there is a vast difference between an actual subsidy and a very minor tax break.
Almost as funny was her ruing the failure of the Dems to front load “enough” of the “good stuff” of ObamaCare, so’s the rubes would have reason to love it better by now, rather than cause after cause day after miserable day to grow to hate it further. None so hopey-changey as a paid spinner.
You better get used to hearing the meme Mara was pushing sdferr,
The way I see it, if the lefties sacrosanct subsidies are increasingly under assault, they will resort to that same sophistry, calling everything they oppose a subsidy.
i.e., the government buying military aircraft is a “subsidy” for the aerospace industry, and the like.
Yea, I thought that was pretty weak of her too.
OT but related: saw Georgie Stephopopolughagus (is that how you spell it?) on Good Morning Amrika getting all squirmy and uncomfortable because some poll is showing an 11 pt swing among women (from +7 Dems to +4 Reps). If true, I imagine that means the blood in the Dem bathtub is going to be running across the floor and out into the hallway where it can soak into the carpet.
Were you going for Stepholopoopphagus E?
No. I just can’t spell Stefanopopoopoo. And If ever there was a smug liberal, it’s him. And he had this “if we’ve lost Cronkite, we’ve lost middle America” vibe going. Yummy schadenfreude for breakfast today!
I don’t think anyone tops Bill Maher for the smug liberal title.
Bill Maher, Alan Combes, that jagoff from crossfire who started Slate. The competition if fierce.
misspelled Colmes.
It sounds like a few of you are anti-Greek or something. Racists.
Shelby Steele once again stands back to look, and sees.
That’s because they’re not real Greeks, they’re Slavs. The last real Greek died in the 7th century.
Shelby’s mostly correct, but Obama hasn’t functioned as a redeemer:
“He has functioned more as a
redeemerchastiser than a steward, a leader who sees a badness in us from which we must beredeemedexcoriated.”There, all fixed.
Smug.
Yet what can possibly justify smug in people who can be so easily
fooledmislead? And what in those who have done the misleading? It’s a puzzle, ain’t it?I think Steele’s point about Teh Redeembler is not that he ever redeemed, but that people thought he would and that’s why they bought the Kool-Aid. To the extent anyone other than a proglodyte still supports him, it’s because they don’t want to throw out all that Kool-Aid so they’re going to drink it all down even if it kills them.
And with ObamaCare, maybe even after.
Without reading the linked piece, my guess is that the answer is found in the idea that it’s easier to con a cheater than it is to con an honest man. We believe what we want to believe.
You may (probably are) right McGehee. But was redeeming the nation Obama’s mandate, or is that what he determined upon after the fact?
The mass who have believed in a charade may think themselves foolish for a short while, but will quit that too. It’s part of the deal.
When the inattentive mass recognizes Obama for the con-man he is (and they will), the critical question with which they must engage (from my point of view, that is) is no longer about Obama at all, but about the “leaders” who have sold them Obama and about the judgment of those sellers. “Did you sell me Obama?” Let the mass leave these geniuses behind hereafter. All of them.
Fear and anger may have been in the mix, but Hitler was really selling something else – the flattering idea that Germans were a superrace destined to rule the world. For some reason that reminds me less of those who celebrate tossing off the yoke of oppressive government than folks who want to regulate my life to bring about utopia. But that’s just me.
It was his campaign theme. Remember “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for?”
I would argue instead that the critical question is about neither Obama nor the leaders who sold him, but about themselves. I’m pretty sure 2008 was not, for most of them at least, the “fool me once.”
Would that we should aspire to self-examination at large McG, I couldn’t agree with you more there. But the pessimist in me tells me back it isn’t going to happen in the main, so let the mass focus at least on the enablers.
It was his campaign theme. Remember “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for?”
That was a “royal” “we” McGehee.
Agree.
OT again.
How come there isn’t an “Outlaw Media”?
There is a whole bunch of smart and erudite people right here and I think it would be a great idea.
The end
I’m alone in the shop with a computer connecteed to the internet and I get to thinkin’.
What a joke this analysis is. We have before us the examples of Christ and you have the gall to print such idiocy?
Man up.
What the fuck is it you’re talking about?
Are you high? Drunk?
What is it?
Jesus is the reason for the season Mr. Jeff
“He hadn’t always been such a bitter bitter fellow”
TWEEEEEEEEeeEET!!!
Excessive irony on a blogpost by Happyfeet. Thats a 15 yard penalty and loss of down!
Jeff,
Can’t you see Thomas is refering to the BeBarack Attitudes;)
oooh you remindered me I have that rum
[…] left, as they’ve made quite clear, doesn’t like you. To them, you are stupid, frightened nativist homophobes who simply don’t understand “the facts or science.” You are bitter-clingers […]