Obama, Tea Party, Terrorists

Obama is so unpresidential.

At a town hall meeting Monday night in Decorah, Iowa, Obama preferred to play the victim than to act like a leader.

Here's video:



The Washington Times has an account of the incident, a Tea Party activist confronting Obama with a legitimate question:

President Obama was confronted by a tea party activist Monday night who wanted to know how Mr. Obama can call for compromise with Republicans while Democrats accuse the tea party of being “terrorists.”

Ryan Rhodes, a leader of the group in Iowa, challenged Mr. Obama during the president’s open-air town hall meeting in Decorah, a town of 8,200 in the northeast corner of Iowa, as the president was taking questions from a mostly friendly audience. The tense moment came soon after Mr. Obama had told the crowd that he views himself as the reasonable one in dealing with congressional Republicans.

Mr. Rhodes shouted out that the president’s calls for more civility in politics were meaningless when “your vice president is calling people like me, a tea party member, a ‘terrorist.’"

According to multiple sources, Vice President Joseph R. Biden agreed with that characterization during a recent meeting with House Democrats during the debt debate showdown last month. Both Mr. Biden’s office and the president have since disavowed the remark.

“I know it’s not going to work, if you stand up and I asked everybody to raise their hand … I didn’t see you, I wasn’t avoiding you,” the president said.

“I absolutely agree that everybody needs to try to tone down the rhetoric,” Mr. Obama said. “In fairness, since I have been called a socialist who wasn’t born in this country, who is destroying America and taking away its freedoms because I passed a health care bill, I am all for lowering the rhetoric.”

I think that's a very poor response, but very typical of Obama's approach.

Everything is about him. He twists a question about a terrible verbal attack on his fellow Americans into something about him.

Instead of being straightforward and directly answering the man's question, Barack "spread the wealth around" Obama whines about people calling him a socialist, etc.

It wasn't enough for Obama to simply say "everybody needs to try to tone down the rhetoric." That was irresponsible. He's not answering the question. He's dodging it.

Obama should have said calling Tea Party activists "terrorists" is wrong. Period.