The Obama 2012 campaign is in full gear and playing from the
Saul Alinsky playbook that has served it so well. You know the
drill. Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize
it.
Obama’s re-election team has set it sights on the Tea Party. Of
course, it’s not the first time the Tea Party has been in Team
Obama’s crosshairs. Just last month, while appearing on CNN’s
State of the Union, David Axelrod
told Candy Crowley that Republicans in Congress “were in the
thralls of this reign of terror from the far right that has dragged
the party to the right.” So if one of Obama’s top advisers is
prepared to liken his political adversaries to terrorists then you
know there’s no limit to what Obama and his acolytes are prepared
to say about the Tea Party. In two of its campaign ads with its
Maoist inspired theme “Forward,”
the voiceover solemnly says, “Some said our best days were behind
us,” accompanied by images with Tea Party protesters.
Tea Partiers, like a majority of Americans, believe the country
is going in the wrong direction under President Obama’s policies.
But that’s a far cry from believing that America’s best days are
behind us. As someone who addressed the Tea
Party Tax Day Rally in Worcester, Massachusetts, last month, I can
personally attest that Tea
Party activists want to leave their children and grandchildren with
a better America. Consider this portion from
the Worcester Tea Party Mission Statement:
The Worcester Tea Party is a local, all volunteer, non-profit
organization. Across the greater Worcester County area we are
building the bottom-up organization to return our country back to
the principles that made her great.
We need to connect with our neighbors to form strong local
groups, ready to take on whatever challenges we face. Together,
there’s no limit to what we can achieve.
Now that doesn’t sound like an organization that believes
America’s best days are behind it. If the Worcester Tea Party or
any other chapter of the Tea Party believed that it wasn’t possible
for America to have a better future, then the Tea Party would not
be much of a political force and would have ceased to exist long
ago. It could be that President Obama knows about as much about the
Tea Party as he does about the authority of the Supreme Court to
overturn legislation, the difference between the Maldives and the
Malvinas. or how many states there are in the Union. Or it could
very well be that President Obama knows exactly what the Tea Party
represents and simply isn’t telling the truth.
With regard to the Obama campaign’s targeting of the Tea Party,
Daniel Halper of the Weekly Standard
writes that “one expects this line of attack many times over
before November’s presidential election.” Halper is no doubt
correct in his assessment. Obama’s targeting of the Tea Party has
only just begun. Yet this shouldn’t be viewed as a negative
development. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that obituaries were
being written for the Tea Party. Back in January, Markos Moulitsas
of the Daily Kos
wrote, “The Tea Party proved itself ineffective, irrelevant and
co-opted this primary cycle.” A year after the mid-term elections,
Robert Schlesinger of U.S. News & World Report
sardonically
wrote, “Remember the Tea Party? It was all the rage back in
‘10, inspiring fear in establishment Republicans and loathing in
Democrats.” Last September, Will Bunch of Media Matters argued that the Tea
Party was basically a creation of “the right-wing media, and it
echoes.” Bunch’s argument is basically a variation on the theme put
out by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who once characterized the
Tea Party as “Astroturf.”
But if the Tea Party is so ineffective, irrelevant, co-opted,
artificial, and as out of style as a polyester suit, then why does
the Obama 2012 campaign feel the need not only to conjure up images
of the Tea Party but to misrepresent its positions? If anything,
Obama’s attention towards the Tea Party demonstrates its strength
and resonance with a significant portion of the electorate. So by
all means I hope the Obama campaign continues to target the Tea
Party. In his pursuit of re-election, President Obama might end up
making the Tea Party stronger than ever.
