Barack, Nancy, Harry, Rahm, Barney, Waxman et al have been cattle-driving a legislative cramdown since the TARP bill passed in George W. Bush’s final days. They mistook victory against a tepid Republican presidential candidate for a mandate to reconstitute the United States of America. Slow to awaken, her citizens now grow angrier. It’s not the loss of land and lives they fear, but of freedoms. Accustomed to trusting any new president, they’re quickly losing confidence in this one. Seduced by his artful use of the spoken word, they’re growing attuned to the nuances within his words. When he begins a sentence with “Let me be clear about this,” our listening becomes acute, for it’s not clarity that often follows, but evasiveness through circuitous parsing.
As members of Congress go home for recess it won’t be to playground games. Some will hide from their constituents, not wanting to face them. Why bother? They plan to vote as Rahm and their party leaders tell them anyway, for their only ideology is to remain in power. Others will think, “The people have short memories; soon they’ll be back watching reruns of Law & Order.” They’ll underestimate the resistance. Meanwhile, the legacy media will attribute it to right-wingers and belligerent extremists incited by their demonized arch enemies, conservative talk show hosts. They don’t get it either.
I believe this is what is going to happen to the democratic senators and congress people if they don’t realize that they are not doing the will of the people. We aren’t a bunch of right wing zealots and crazies but informed people. One by one these out of touch politicians are going to fall like a house of cards. We will defeat you in the ballot boxes.
Others, the bolder pols, will face their constituents and be so foolish as to presume to tell them what they, the voters, should think. Tell them what’s good for them, whether they know it or not. This will be a mistake. Unless they represent the uniformly like-minded, these members of Congress will face spirited resistance. More of it than most will have encountered in their political careers. When it comes, their faces will assume fault lines of shock-and-awe in the face of citizen audacity. Some will paper over it with thin smiles and louder talk. That won’t work.
Vocal opposition from their constituents differs from what they’re accustomed to hearing from colleagues on the floor of the House or Senate. There it’s, “I respectfully take exception to the position expressed by the honorable member from the state of bla bla bla.” The ruling class speaks the language of the ruling class when citizens might be watching on C-SPAN. But in the public forum, people speak plainly, in a language with which some members of Congress are not used to being addressed. The resistance doesn’t speak Beltway.
Cross posted @ [sayanythingblog.com]
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