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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

How does that catch phrase go...



Useful Idiots


Douglas Schoen warns White House: Don't back 'Occupy Wall Street'






 Fortunately they're not listening, as the exuberant idiots become useful in their own demise.


Pollster Douglas Schoen is out with a warning for President Barack Obama: Supporting Occupy Wall Street could cost you a second-term.

"President Obama and the Democratic leadership are making a critical error in embracing the Occupy Wall Street movement—and it may cost them the 2012 election," Schoen said in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

The movement, which has spread beyond New York City over the last month, "reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform," he wrote.



Schoen presents what he touts is probably "the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion," including data that he says demonstrates the fact that the protesters represent "an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence," and that their common bond is "a deep commitment to left-wing policies."

The Occupiers are "a group of engaged progressives who are disillusioned with the capitalist system and have a distinct activist orientation," — all reasons that could make the administration's support for the movement "catastrophic for their party," he warns.

According to Schoen, Obama risks repeating a mistake made in 1970, when "aligning too closely with the antiwar movement hurt Democrats in the midterm election."

The president has already made the serious mistake of abandoning independent and swing voters, Schoen said, by focusing solely on pleasing voters who support taxing oil companies and the rich. Rather than supporting "increasingly radical and potentially violent activists," the pollster suggested that Democrats reach out to the country's moderates.

Put simply, Democrats need to say they are with voters in the middle who want cooperation, conciliation and lower taxes. And they should work particularly hard to contrast their rhetoric with the extremes advocated by the Occupy Wall Street crowd," he said.


“God bless them for their spontaneity,” Pelosi told reporters. “It’s young, it’s spontaneous, it’s focused and it’s going to be effective.”





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