Double pol treats for breakfast! First Frank Kloucek wakes me up with advocacy for his redistricting amendment; then I find Gordon Howie blowing smoke from his Black Hills hookah to obscure Republican chickenness with charges of Occupiers unruliness.
The failed Tea Party gubernatorial candidate and tax delinquent notes that U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor chickened out of a public appearance yesterday. Cantor had scheduled a speech on income inequality yesterday to a partially hand-picked audience of 250 at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. Or at least, that's what Cantor thought. Cantor found out that U. Penn policy is to make events like this open to the public. Cantor heard that Occupy Philly protesters planned to protest his appearance, he bailed. Rather than come and converse with the American people whose ingenuity and grit he planned to praise in his prepared remarks, Cantor bailed.
Gordon Howie looks at Cantor's chicken run and laments people power at work:
Allowing these protesters to have that much power is exactly what they want. They are not sure what they really want, except to be "in control". They aren't sure what they really want to control, much less what they would do if they were in control.
On would have to assume that the campus security was sufficient to handle the protesters, so what was Cantor thinking when he cancelled? It would seem that gave the protesters some power if they can "shut down" an event or a scheduled speech. That is the WRONG message to send them.
If these protesters have a legitimate beef they need to be free to express it. They certainly have that freedom. The problem to this point with them is that, aside from the fact they have no real message, they have been an unruly group [Gordon Howie, "Protesters Take the Power," The Right Side, 2011.10.22].
Read that closely: a public official avoids a public appearance, apparently because he does not want to face criticism from boisterous protesters. And Tea Partier Gordon Howie turns that situation into a critique of the protesters.
Remember 2009, when Tea Partiers were disrupting town hall meetings with their critique of health care reform and their demands of Democrats to keep their government hands off Medicare? I don't recall Gordon or any other anarcho-conservatives huffing and moaning about the wrongful ceding of power to unruly protesters. The Tea Party message was clear: the protesters are right! They deserve power! Listen to them!
Gordon, the Occupation is right. They deserve power. Eric Cantor and everyone else should listen to the protesters... because the protesters are us.