Fear of a Tea Party Planet

- Why the Democratic National Committee wants to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street Protesters -

Why would former US House Speaker and legislative airhead Nancy Pelosi go out of her way to embrace the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protesters? Why would civil rights movement icon John Lewis attempt to address the OWS group in Atlanta’s Woodruff Park? Why would President Obama praise these groups even after hundreds were arrested in New York City?

Tea Party Rally in Washington, DC
Image via Wikipedia

These are legitimate questions because of the significant political risks undertaken by these nationally known Democrats. They risk their personal reputations, if not their re-election chances, to mingle their fortunes with an little known group of protesters. They are also placing their party’s lower tier candidates at greater risk with this affiliation. Generally a high risk should have an opportunity to generate high rewards, and this is the case. Democrats are playing high stakes poker to counter the Tea Party.

Publicly, Democrats deny that the Tea Party had any effect on the 2010 elections and will soon disappear. No one really believes Democrats are that stupid and recalcitrant regarding reality. Having failed to destroy the Tea Party movement, though slandering it so that the movement’s popularity has decreased, the Democrats want a left-wing movement to counter the Tea Party.

Whipped in the 2010 elections, Democrats want a Tea Party of their own; some tame version they can co-opt and use to mobilize voters in the 2012 elections. Enter the OWS people and some Democrats are salivating at the opportunity to control a movement that could be labeled “spontaneous”.

There are two significant problems for the Democrats. First, they have started to believe their own press releases about the Tea Party, buying the lie that the Tea Party is a centrally-controlled creature of the Republican Party. That’s not the case. In fact, the Tea Party has had a large impact on the GOP rather than the reverse. Personally, I believe those changes were for the better because they refocused the GOP on smaller government and lower taxes. Those two things were arguably missing from the GOP over the past 15 years or so.

The second problem for the Democrats is that they assume the OWS groups simply need to be directed by someone who knows better. I don’t necessarily believe that the OWS people will bend their knees to the arrogance of the Democrat central planners. They have their own agenda and while that agenda is apparently unknown to the mass protesters, the leaders have made demands that reflect the agenda of their central committees.

Unless the OWS leaders make an ill-advised Faustian bargain with the Democrats, the Democrats must be willing to accept and openly endorse many of the communist-based ideas of OWS. While the facts are that those beliefs are closer to Democrats’ current beliefs in wealth redistribution than they profess, the public acknowledgement of those principles will still shock the casual voter.

In the end, the leftists fears of the Tea Party may lead to actions causing a terrible setback for the Democrat Party in the United States. Democrats seem to be risking everything to maintain a failing President and a do-nothing majority in the US Senate in 2012. They perceive a counter to the much-hated Tea Party as a necessary step, even if they risk political ruin.

by Ken Carroll

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