“We’ve now seen three landslide Republican victories in three states that President Obama carried in 2008. From the tea parties to the town halls to the Massachusetts Miracle, Americans have tried to make their opposition to Washington’s big government agenda loud and clear. But the President has decided that this current discontent isn’t his fault, it’s ours. He seems to think we just don’t understand what’s going on because he hasn’t had the chance – in his 411 speeches and 158 interviews last year – to adequately explain his policies to us.

“Instead of sensibly telling the American people, ‘I’m listening,’ the president is saying, ‘Listen up, people!’ This approach is precisely the reason people are upset with Washington. Americans understand the president’s policies. We just don’t agree with them. But the president has refused to shift focus and come around to the center from the far left. Instead he and his old campaign advisers are regrouping to put a new spin on the same old agenda for 2010…

“Candidate Obama over-promised; President Obama has under-delivered. We understand you, Mr. President. We’ve listened to you again and again. We ask that you now listen to the American people.”

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“The Tea Party movement, identified by some commentators as the first right-wing street-protest movement of our time, may be a reflection of how far populist sentiment has drifted away from the political left in the decades since the New Deal. ‘The original Populists were the ones who came up with the income tax,’ Charles Postel, the author of ‘The Populist Vision,’ said recently. ‘They were for the nationalization of everything. Their idea of a model institution was the Post Office.’ Bryan believed that the ‘right to coin money and issue money is a function of the government,’ and railed, most memorably, against the ‘cross of gold.’ Yet few ideas stir the Tea Party faithful more than a fear of creeping nationalization and the dangers—both moral and practical—associated with printing money to suit momentary needs. The sponsors of Glenn Beck’s nightly history lessons on the depredations of American progressivism frequently include purveyors of gold…

“As the meeting was breaking up, a soft-spoken project manager, and father of six, named Paul Dopp asked me if I knew who had won the Battle of Saratoga. ‘It was General Arnold,’ he said—Benedict Arnold. ‘Part of the reason he turned traitor was that he didn’t get the recognition for it. He got ticked. But what he did is he rode right out in front between the soldiers, looked at the Americans, and said, ‘I’m fighting. Are you coming?’ And they came. Someone is going to stand up for principle.’ Dopp said that his brother had travelled to the Soviet Union in the nineteen-eighties, while studying détente, and returned with a sober lesson on the corrupting effects of power. ‘For a lot of people, government is their religion,’ he said. ‘That’s their place of worship, because they truly believe in the betterment of man.'”

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Via Gateway Pundit.