In Defense of Hobbits & Cowboys

Since I wrote my first blog Congress has raised the debt limit, Texas Governor Rick Perry has entered the race for president and President Obama has proposed a $447 billion jobs bill. 

An underlying theme during this time has been the concerted effort by establishment elites and liberal news media to paint as extremists anyone who dares to question the conventional wisdom of Washington DC’s ruling class. First and foremost amongst their targets have been Tea Party members and the conservative candidates who are aligned with them. 

During the debt limit debate the Obama administration accused Tea Party activists of holding the GOP and the US economy hostage. President Obama himself accused Republicans of using the national debt as “a gun against the heads of the American people."  No less than the Wall Street Journal and John McCain felt it necessary to put conservative Republicans in their place by calling them ”tea party hobbits.” Democrats in Congress claimed that the Tea Party wanted the US to default on its debt. And they warned that America’s credit rating would be downgraded unless the debt limit was immediately increased through the 2012 elections. (It was anyway.)

Once Rick Perry announced his decision to run for president, he too became a target. (Liberals consider him more of general election threat than Michele Bachmann.) Perry’s rapid rise in the polls alarmed Progressive Democrats and irked beltway Republicans. He was immediately dubbed a cowboy. His stump speeches were labeled as dangerous rhetoric. Pundits went out of their way to try to create a divide between Perry and former President Bush.  

Meanwhile, President Obama introduced his latest stimulus plan by accusing Republicans who might oppose it of “political circus” and “refusing to put country before party.” According to the president, if you doubt that another $447 billion of government spending will grow sustainable jobs, you’re also against fire fighters, police officers, veterans, small children and puppies. 

Obviously politicians like Barack Obama, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and even some liberal Republicans think that this is a winning strategy for the 2012 elections. But they may be in for a surprise.

Before unleashing their attack dogs they might have stopped to consider that the Tea Party consists mostly of middle class Americans, including many Democrats and Independents. They didn’t and still don’t realize that when so-called maverick John McCain takes a swipe at fellow Republicans Jim DeMint, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, he’s also showing his disdain for the large number of working class men and women who elected them to public office.  

It’s never occurred to the inside-the-beltway crowd that the American people might have a sense of fairness. Progressives expect the average American to be offended when Rick Perry says, with tongue in cheek, that Texans would treat Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke “ugly." But Progressives also think that voters shouldn’t be offended when senior Obama advisors say that in the 2012 elections Obama “will have to kill Mitt Romney” (or when Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa exhorts union members to “take the S.O.B.s out”). 

Only in Disney by the Potomac is it out of the mainstream to support smaller government, less spending and a balanced budget. Boston high society and Harvard professors may look down their collective noses at people they call cowboys, but most Americans like cowboys a whole lot more than they do government bureaucrats, news reporters and ivy-league intellectuals.  

Progressive politicians’ attack on the Tea Party is a feint to the middle. Many of them actually have nothing but contempt for their constituents. But they think that they con voters into believing that a left wing ideology is the only reasonable one and that anyone not in favor of bigger government, more regulations and higher taxes is an extremist. 

Going into 2012 they’re hoping that voters won’t understand that almost three years of massive government expansion has done nothing but lower their standard of living and limit their options for a brighter future.

And they’re betting that the American people won’t realize that a vote to continue the policies of Barack Obama is a vote to give up their freedom.

Some of us are betting that they will.

If you agree, please check out the Cuyahoga Valley Republicans, a 600 member independent grass roots organization dedicated to advancing and defending the principles of liberty, justice, free enterprise and limited government, at www.cuyahogavalleygop.com