The Left was unable to paint the Tea Party as anarchists, violent lunatics, or racists.  The feeble attempt to suggest they should really be focusing their ire at George W. Bush or the Republican Party fizzled into embarrassed silence.  Like a clumsy kid going deep into the dinnerware department to catch a Nerf football pass in a department store, John Kerry lumbered to the nearest microphone to blurt out the latest meme: the Tea Party isn’t paying attention at all.  They’re just bleating in confusion, sheep panicking in the shadow of terrible forces they are not qualified to discuss:

“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 or what’s happening,” Kerry told reporters after touring the Boston Medical Center yesterday.

[…] Kerry made the remarks on voters following questions about U.S. Rep Barney Frank’s re-election campaign and queries about securing federal funding for the Hub hospital.

“I think a lot of the anger today – while it’s appropriate because Washington is broken – is not directed at the right people,” said Kerry. “Barney is prepared, as others are, to explain what we’re doing. I think when people hear the facts and they see what we’re doing, it frankly makes sense.”

This is the last desperate attempt of the Democrats to frighten independents away from the Tea Party movement.  Slandering them as nuts or haters didn’t work – it’s too obviously false, and even the Democrats’ media allies were becoming nervous about throwing bombshell charges without evidence.  The ignorance smear is a logical choice for a Hail Mary pass, just weeks before the election.  It only requires the Left to convince independents that our economy is crumbling due to forces behind their comprehension, and the rubes waving copies of the Constitution at Glenn Beck rallies don’t understand it, either.

I’m here to assure Senator Kerry that we understand the situation perfectly well.  Barney Frank’s role in causing the subprime mortgage crisis, for example, is perfectly clear.  He lied extravagantly to protect Fannie Mae from oversight, both for ideological reasons, and for the financial benefit of his boyfriend Herb Moses, a Fannie Mae executive.  The financial system of the entire planet nearly collapsed as a result.  Barney Frank should have been removed from office before the first bank bailout, and not allowed anywhere near a government office, ever again.  He should have spent the last two years answering subpoenas and facing charges, not slobbering over all the new money he wants his Party to seize from honest Americans.  The same goes for anyone in either party who knowingly participated in the Fannie Mae scam.  A responsible government that took the public trust seriously would have demanded nothing less.  We’ve heard a lot about bad behavior in the private sector during the mortgage crisis, and there was indeed plenty to say.  We haven’t a word about the responsibility of politicians, or seen any of them formally brought to account.

The Tea Party is a large and growing movement that rejects the premise that a morally and intellectually superior government should be given endlessly expanding power over every aspect of our lives.  We reject a media-approved narrative that holds the State blameless for its misdeeds, or gives it unlimited credit for its good intentions.  We are competent and compassionate enough to manage our own lives, and address our problems through willing cooperation with our neighbors.

We’re not lost in incoherent anger because we misunderstand a reality only Democrat Party leaders can see clearly.  On the contrary, we realize that an insane level of willing blindness is necessary to ignore the evidence of their abject failure.  You’ve got to be pretty stupid to think Barack Obama’s only problem is that he’s not superhuman enough to fix the “mess George Bush left him” two years ago.  To accept this critique, you would have to believe Americans are so weak that Bush could permanently destroy us in eight years, and Bill Clinton’s last years in office were some kind of golden age.  You would have to believe the effort of defeating Saddam Hussein mortally wounded us.

We don’t blame ourselves for the nation’s problems, Senator Kerry.  We blame you. We’re not just looking at your Party, either… or have you not been paying attention to the primaries?  We can see how much control the State has asserted over our lives through impenetrable layers of regulation, which even legislators admit they neither read nor understand.  We’re not just laughing off Nancy Pelosi’s comment that we had to pass ObamaCare to learn what was in it.  The Democrats demand we give them vast amounts of power without specifying what they plan to do with it, establishing any means to judge their success, or defining any limit to future expansion of the precedents they set today.  They demand our faith, along with the resulting surrender of faith in ourselves.  We reject those demands.

We know you’re already brainstorming ways to stick us with the tab for Obama’s madcap spending spree.  The seizure of money through taxation is the confiscation of hours from our lives.  We are taking our lives back.  We’re not interested in the shoddy goods you want to “give” us today, because we’re paying attention to the bills that will come due tomorrow.  We will be no more enchanted by a Republican junk sale in 2011, should they be foolish enough to offer one.

Democrat consultant Phil Johnson defended Kerry by saying, “He’s just making the point that people have real lives to lead and most people are not spending a lot of time worrying about politics, particularly in a tough economy.”  That’s exactly the point, Mr. Johnson.  People have to worry about politics now.  They can’t just “lead their lives.”  They are about to feel the weight of a law that will force them to purchase health insurance.  Many of them have lost their jobs to the approaching rumble of that law.  Others have watched the value of their property and investments evaporate due to the mistakes, or deliberate malpractice, of the political class.  If Obama gets his cap-and-trade legislation, a sizable number of Americans will find themselves working in industries which have ceased to make economic sense, because of skyrocketing energy prices.

The stated objective of the Obama Administration was “transforming” the American people.  Well, transformation is an aggressive act, carried out through compulsive force.  We resist, and we will prevail.

Cross-posted at www.doczero.org.

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