They are not typical Tea Party activists: A woman who voted for President Obama and believes he’s a “phenomenal speaker.” Another who said she was a “knee-jerk, bleeding heart liberal.”
These two women are not alone.
Some Americans who say they have been sympathetic to Democratic causes in the past — some even voted for Democratic candidates — are angry with President Obama and his party. They say they are now supporting the Tea Party — a movement that champions less government, lower taxes and the defeat of Democrats even though it’s not formally aligned with the Republican Party.
To be sure, the number of Democrats in the Tea Party movement is small. A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll shows that while 96 percent of Tea Party activists identify themselves as either Republican or Independent, only 4 percent say they are Democrats.
Some of these disgruntled voters are taking part in the current Tea Party Express tour. The tour began in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nevada, on March 28 and is making 44 stops across the nation. It ends in Washington on tax day — April 15.
Ann Ducket attended the Tea Party rally in Grand Junction, Colorado, on Wednesday.
A lawyer and lifelong Democrat, Ducket made her political leanings clear: She said she was a campus community organizer for Democratic Sen. George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, voted for Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, and previously ran for elective office in Colorado as a Democrat.
I was a card-carrying member of the ACLU, and I probably did inhale in college,” Ducket said.
Ducket, who is now an independent and did not vote for Obama, said the president has “carried things to an extreme.”
“I think we’ve gone too far on the side of government doing too much,” Ducket said. “The Democratic Party is wanting to take care of everyone, instead of helping everybody stand on their own two feet.”
Roxanne Lewis expressed a similar point of view. A small business owner in Grand Junction, Lewis described herself as a lifelong Democrat and called the president a “phenomenal speaker.” She voted for him because she “believed in what he was saying: change.”
But, Lewis added, “I should’ve listened a lot closer when he talked about ‘spreading the wealth.’ “
……David Saucedo is a rapper and community activist who frequently appears at Tea Party rallies. Using the stage name “Polatik,” he performs rap songs that slam President Obama and the Democrats.
Though he eventually voted for GOP Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, he said he was initially impressed with the president.
Now Saucedo has turned into an Obama critic. “A lot of the things he says sound good, until you look at the consequences of what they will do on the long term.”
The rest here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/02/democrats.tea.party/index.html
Amazing. Throughout the campaign, conservative, libertarian, and independent bloggers and political pundits, raised hell about Obama’s philosophy, background, friends, mentors, associates, and the organizations to which he belonged. It’s not like we didn’t try. It isn’t like the information and facts were totally hidden from public view. WE knew what was coming.
The problem: Like millions of other people with malleable intellects, Ducket , Lewis, and Saucedo chose to worship at the altar of Obamessiah and ingest the ‘hopey-changey’ crap propagated by the gushing main stream media.
Because of them, we now have to fight an arrogant, dismissive, socialist autocracy to get our country back.
Well folks, glad to know you woke up and smelled the horseshit.
Welcome to the fight.
Related post: http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2010/03/29/tea-party-express-hits-the-road/