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Obama and the Tea Party

George Will made an interesting observation on the ABC news program 'This Week' claiming "1/5th of Tea Party folks voted for Obama and 1/3 express support". I quoted this on Facebook and was promptly informed that Will is known to pull statistics out of his ass. As such, I decided to research further. That Facebook friend may well be right, and an analysis of the motivation for the apparent fiction is disturbing.

Here's the clip:

(commenters on the video repeat that question about Will's numbers, but Wikipedia does not.)

Even if this 'analysis' is completely false I do think it is safe to say that Independent Voters, who tilted strongly for Obama in the election, have largely lost favor with Obama. This would include myself, and I am certainly NOT a Palin/Tancredo tea bagger.

Researching this subject further is difficult, mass media is full of references to Obama and the Tea Party attacking each other in 'support' of their own particular agenda. I did however find one reference that alluded to the same phenomenon, curiously also on ABC.

I smell a rat.

Independent voters are the most important segment of the electorate, their tendencies decide elections. Yet the corporate media, at best, ignores them. Or, at worst, engages in efforts to manipulate them such as in the recent mainstream conservative takeover of the Tea Party. Though there are admirable libertarian elements in that movement, which I hope will persevere, the fact is that the effort is very much an anti-Obama groundswell, regardless of how you look at it.

In my opinion the motivation for George Will's alleged fiction is nothing less than a 'willful' and deceitful attempt at manipulating the independent voter into the "Freak Show Circus" (Will's term) of the big tent Tea Party.

But perhaps Mr. Will, a better course would be for you to join with the rest of the right's numerically challenged in jail - plenty of room in that tent, once we get the pot smokers out, right?

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