So far, what we have been reporting – the fact that OWS is almost entirely made up of radical Marxists – has been based on the pictures, videos and news accounts. Now we have polling data that confirms what our eyes and ears have been telling us.
Pollster, Douglas Schoen, writing for the Wall Street Journal thinks that may come back to haunt him in 2012:
Last week, senior White House adviser David Plouffe said that “the protests you’re seeing are the same conversations people are having in living rooms and kitchens all across America. . . . People are frustrated by an economy that does not reward hard work and responsibility, where Wall Street and Main Street don’t seem to play by the same set of rules.” Nancy Pelosi and others have echoed the message.
As I noted at Left-Wing Institute For Civil Discourse, um…..no, most Americans do not identify with those weirdos, and are most certainly not “having the same conversations in their living rooms and kitchen tables". What absurd and condescending nonsense.
How insulting to our intelligence, to presume that we sound like these maroons.
Schoen continues:
The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York’s Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.
Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.
***What binds a large majority of the protesters together—regardless of age, socioeconomic status or education—is a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.
***
Thus Occupy Wall Street is a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation. Among the general public, by contrast, 41% of Americans self-identify as conservative, 36% as moderate, and only 21% as liberal. That’s why the Obama-Pelosi embrace of the movement could prove catastrophic for their party.
By embracing #OWS, a radical group that does not reflect American values, Obama will lose even more Independents than he’s lost already. I don’t know who’s advising the President, but someone should tell him that without Independents, he has no chance of victory.
But as Keith Koffler suggested, Obama may not be able to help himself:
Obama is a former community organizer who was rated the most liberal member of the Senate. These kinds of protests are in his blood. He is no more able to condemn them than he is able to reject himself.
It’s disconcerting that this president appears to harbor some radical notions. What scares is when he is supportive of those who would make such ideas reality by toppling the system he presides over and has pledged to defend.
We will be living in disconcerting times for the foreseeable future, I think, because the radical left-wing mob will not be going away no matter who wins in 2012. And if a Republican wins, they will be even larger and shriller.
Hat tip: Weasel Zippers
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