DEMOCRATS SMELL LIKE AN OPEN SEWER

Ugly and pathetic.  That’s what you get when you combine envy with desperation, and wrap them in hypocrisy.

Democrats envy and fear the Tea Party, a grassroots movement that arose spontaneously after CNBC Editor Rick Santelli’s epic rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Feb. 19, 2009.  There followed more than 300 rallies, including one in Searchlight, Nevada (pop 576), hometown of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, where police estimated the crowd at 8,000-10,000.

Tea Partiers turned their attention to the 2010 midterm elections, and helped hand Democrats their worst thumping since 1946.

Envious Democrats tried to Astroturf a liberal alternative, the Coffee Party, founded by Annabelle Park, an organizer of the United for Obama video channel.  Ms. Park’s affiliation with the Obama campaign was not mentioned in news media accounts of this "grassroots" organization.

"Is the Coffee Party the next big thing?" asked Stephanie Condon of CBS on March 12, 2010.  But despite massive media cheerleading, attendance at Coffee Party events was sparse.

"Mainstream" journalists are trying again, harder this time.

"The Occupy Wall Street protests are suddenly all that Washington can talk about," said Christiane Amanpour of ABC News.  "Are we witnessing the birth of a new kind of Tea Party?"

"These protests have been largely peaceful and their messages of economic inequality, social injustice and peace over war are beginning to take root in the nation’s political debate," said reporter Ron Mott on the NBC Nightly News.

"The seed of progressive activism in the Occupy protests may grow into something very big indeed," wrote Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson.

The movement "has spread to more than 250 American cities, more than a thousand countries," enthused ABC anchor Diane Sawyer.  That’s remarkable, since there are only 195 countries on Planet Earth (196 if you count Kosovo).

Ms. Sawyer’s accuracy is rivaled by those journalists who compare OWS protests to the Tea Party.

*OWS protests "are to Tea Party events as Pittsburg, Kansas (pop. 20,233) is to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (pop 305,704)," wrote columnist George Will yesterday (10/12).  "So far, probably fewer people have participated in all of them combined than attended just one Tea Party rally, that of Sept. 12, 2009 on the Washington Mall."

*Nearly all adults at Tea Party rallies are among the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income tax.  Most at OWS protests are among the 47 percent who do not, but who think they’re entitled to lots more free stuff anyway.  They’re "idealistic," Mr. Robinson said.

*Tea Partiers protested against runaway federal spending and Obamacare.  There is little (other than their desire to sponge off taxpayers for free stuff) that unifies OWS protesters.  Many are there for sex, drugs, and to hide out from the law.  Some have been paid to protest.

*Tea Partiers cleaned up after themselves.  Garbage is strewn wherever OWS protesters march. The OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park, reports the New York Post, smells "like an open sewer — with people urinating and defecating in public."

*Tea Partiers are law abiding.  Hundreds have been arrested at OWS protests, such as in Iowa, Boston, and of course New York City.

OWS originated with Adbusters, a Canadian magazine that caters to the far left.  But ABC News reported Monday (10/10) that "Democrats Seek to Own ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Movement."

How appropriate.  The party of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Hussein Obama does indeed smell like an open sewer.

Democrats wish to deflect blame for the economy from themselves to Wall Street.  But most responsible for the housing market meltdown were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the now bankrupt "government-sponsored enterprises" whose reckless lending policies were protected by Democrats in Congress.

The Wall Street investment banks most complicit with Fannie and Freddie were big contributors to Democrats.  President Obama has protected them from bankruptcy and subsidized them at the expense of smaller, regional banks that had nothing to do with the meltdown.

Their friends in the news media rarely call Democrats on their hypocrisy.  But their embrace of OWS could lead to big trouble.  Stunts like blocking the Brooklyn Bridge do not endear the protesters to the working people they inconvenience.  Many protesters are openly Marxist.  Some advocate violence.

The last time Democrats so openly embraced the hard left was at their national convention in 1972.  That didn’t work out so well.  The Democrat candidate for president lost by the largest popular vote margin in history.  Then again, George McGovern did manage to carry Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.