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| Chris Battle |
If you’ve got an opinion about the N.Y. mosque controversy, better keep it to yourself or you could end up under investigation in the House Star Chamber. Pelosi says she wants to know how opposition to the mosque is being “ginned up.” She wants to know who’s funding this anger. She wants to know what the hell is wrong with the 61 percent of Americans who evidently disagree with her views. (Her disingenuous view being that this is a “zoning issue” only and all the national controversy is much ado about politics.) Ah, if only she could threaten to take away a prized committee from the average Joe out there, the independent bastards, then things would run so much more smoothly.
Don’t get her wrong. Speaker of the House J. Edgar Hoover is perfectly willing to look into the finances and god knows what else of those who are behind the mosque, too. She has gone berserk with prosecutorial tics.
In a statement issued by her staff “clarifying” her first statement, the speaker wants us to know she was simply calling for an openness of debate. Transparency is the word of the day, according to her staff. Another one might be intimidation.
Pelosi’s efforts to walk back her provocative call for an investigation were about as clumsy as the president’s I-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it statement about the mosque--one day he was for it, until he met an immediate political backlash, and the next day he was against it.
Pelosi--safe in her politically surreal balloon that is San Francisco--is not nearly so malleable as President Obama. She’d still like to gavel somebody in a courtroom and get to the bottom of this “concerted effort to make this a political issue by some.” For the sake of fairness, she’ll gavel everybody. Quick, somebody find the FBI’s old cointelpro files. We can toss Joe the Plumber’s file in there alongside Martin Luther King’s and John Lennon’s.
Pelosi’s comments are appallingly reminiscent of her views during the heated town halls of the healthcare debate. The ones that gave birth to a movement fully formed, angry that its government would force a liberal version of healthcare reform down its throat despite all national polls showing the public’s opposition.
This was not legitimate protest, Pelosi and the White House claimed at the time. It was, they asserted, a concerted effort to make this (healthcare) a political issue by some. Sound familiar? It wasn’t that the public could possibly have been upset with the healthcare bill; it had to be a case of evil genius Republican operators “ginning up” false controversy.
One wonders when Nancy Pelosi last had to run a real campaign for reelection. Having managed some myself, I remember simply trying to gin up a good crowd for a fish fry or watermelon festival. Couple hundred people turning out for a member of Congress was excellent. A couple thousand? You take note of that--something way beyond a political machine is at work here.
This, however, is Pelosi’s way: You’re either with us, un-American, or a Republican-manufactured mob. Evidently, Pelosi’s nightmare mob reared its ugly manufactured head again. Unfortunately for her--and more so for vulnerable Democrats on the campaign trail--the “mob” is, once again, the American people--sometimes known as voters. The ignorant, malleable clods.
As for me, now that I have dared speak about that which shall not be named, I plan to watch my back. Pelosi’s people could be anywhere. Keep your blinds closed and your voice down.
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Chris Battle is partner at Adfero Group, a public relations firm in Washington, DC. He submitted this article to the ARRA News Service Editor which also appears in US News He is also the editor of Security Debrief, a blog focused on homeland and national security issues. Previously, Battle served as chief of staff at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and director of congressional and public affairs for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
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