President Obama Talks Tea Bags at 100th Day Town Hall

Politico reports that President Obama addressed the Tax Day Tea Party Movement directly during his 100th Day Townhall in Missouri today. The President's remarks were considerably more measured than the mockery leveled at the protesters by the news media:

"Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, Obama said, "let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security."

"But," Obama continued, "let's not play games and pretend that the reason [for the deficit] is because of the Recovery Act."

Assuming that Politico didn't leave out a bunch of context, I'm a little bit surprised that the President wasn't a bit more surgical in his criticism o f the tea partiers. While his implication that the protests' premise was "unserious" is arguably accurate, I would have thought he would have also acknowledged the sincerity of the individual protesters.

On the day of the protests, I asked Robert Gibbs about the White House's ability to reach out to the average Americans at the protests, and while he wanted to assure them that the President is looking out for their interests, he also observed that the majority of them are predisposed to disagree with the President, and are likely to disagree with him no matter what.

This is probably why the President chose to make the point in that way. Although a fairly mild statement, the right will almost certainly paint him as slamming the protests, and claim victimhood for themselves. The real audience here is the political middle, and the message is that these protests are less about policy and more about partisan opposition to President Obama.

Tommy on: Daily Dose:

• Rushing to Conclusions
• Robert Gibbs' Magical Powers and Other Observations
• Seniors Handcuff Selves to White House - No, Really
• The Republicans' First 100 Days


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