SCARE FARE
There are partisan vandals afoot, say those pondering their damaged property. They fret the worst is yet to come.
Town meetings devolve into arguments. There’s finger-pointing, hollering - and now, a vandalized Chevy Cavalier.
“I’m worried, and I think more bad stuff is on the way. There are huge, right-wing operations behind this. They’ve got money; they’ve got corporate interest behind them. I think there are professional folks out there agitating people with doomsday scenarios,” Michael Huttner tells Inside the Beltway.
The founder of ProgressNow Colorado has called in local police to help discover who ripped out the side mirrors and scraped up a staffer’s car during a recent public event hosted by Rep. Ed Perlmutter, Colorado Democrat.
Michael Ditto was inside attending the event in the town of Brighton, only to discover his compromised Cavalier in the parking lot afterwards. Mr. Huttner theorizes that a pro-health care reform flyer on the seat of the car was “the motivating factor for the crime.” He is now soliciting donations to cover Mr. Ditto’s insurance deductible, assuring donors that any extra funds will be applied to the fight for “meaningful” health insurance reform.
“The thing that gets to me is this: The exact same people who are organizing tea parties are organizing these kinds of things, and stirring the pot,” Mr. Huttner says.
THE COUNTERPOINT
And now, a word from somewhere inside the purported Department of Agitation.
“The Democrats don’t like their playbook being used against them. The ’thugs’ the Democrats are talking about are showing up to peacefully exercise their First Amendment right to petition Congress and speak. The Democrats’ noble activists - the Service Employees International Union and MoveOn.org guys - are then showing up to beat up the people at the town halls defending the American dream,” Erick Erickson tells Inside the Beltway.
Mr. Erickson is editor-in-chief of RedState.com, a vigorous blog for right-of-center activists.
“We’ve reached a point where Democrats think it is patriotic to call American soldiers Nazis and war criminals, but un-American to point out Barack Obama’s goons are operating like brownshirts from East Germany and the Soviet Union.” Mr. Erickson continues. It’s also funny that according to the Democrats, real grass-roots activists must be subsidized by George Soros. Anyone not so subsidized must be an astroturfer.”
GROOVY REPUBLICANS
There is an annoying old saying that states, “If you can remember the 1960s, then you weren’t there.”
Yeah. Well, like, uh-huh, groovy.
With that thought in mind, more Republicans “know what Woodstock was” than Democrats, according to the Pew Research Center, which on Wednesday releases a big, fat survey on all things Woodstock. You know, the rock festival that was held over 200 years ago. No, wait. It’s was 40 years ago. It only seems like 200 years, now that old Woodstock ticket stubs are turning up for serious historic evaluation on “Antiques Roadshow.”
The Pew survey revealed that 75 percent of Republicans were Woodstock-conscious, compared with 66 percent of Democrats. But the researchers didn’t attribute anything particularly psychedelic to their findings.
The difference is “a disparity largely explained by the far higher share of blacks and Hispanics who are Democrats than Republicans,” say lead authors Paul Taylor and Rich Morin.
GASSING IT UP
Fresh from heroics in North Korea, former President Bill Clinton was in Las Vegas on Monday for an energy summit. Most of the press coverage was devoted to where Mr. Clinton celebrated his 63rd birthday (the Craft Steakhouse in the MGM Hotel) and who was in attendance (Terry McAuliffe, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, John Podesta, among others). Also present at the summit, and mightily so: oil magnate T. Boone Pickens.
Politics and incredible beef were not the sole focus, he says.
“Natural gas was the star of the show,” Mr. Pickens tells Inside the Beltway. “When the Pickens Plan got started, natural gas was considered a minor resource, which was being quickly depleted. Because of the awareness raised by the Pickens Plan campaign launched just over a year ago, our abundant domestic supply and its potential to immediately replace foreign oil at the pump is now realized, and natural gas is now the clear choice for a bridge fuel to a more energy-independent future.”
A memo jointly crafted by the Center for American Progress and the Energy Future Coalition highlighted many of the points his plan already made, Mr. Pickens adds.
POLL DU JOUR
- 24 percent of Republicans and 61 percent of Democrats view the federal government favorably.
- 57 percent of Republicans and 48 percent of Democrats view state governments favorably.
- 70 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats view local governments favorably.
Source: Pew Research Center survey of 1,506 adults conducted July 22-26.
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