SENATE DEMS IGNORE THEIR CONSTITUENTS AT THEIR POLITICAL PERIL
Senate Democrats lead city of ostriches
By: Mark Tapscott
Editorial Page Editor
December 3, 2009
Most folks in the nation’s capital have probably never even heard of Jenny Beth Martin despite the fact the Tea Party Patriots organizer is not-so-quietly helping to reshape America’s future even as the Washington Establishment obliviously goes about its business as usual.
I’ve never met or talked to Martin in person and wouldn’t recognize her if she walked into the Examiner newsroom today. But it doesn’t take much reading of her stuff to see that she gets the two most important facts about political reality in the Obama era.
First, Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress are fueling a growing public frustration and anger with the explosion of authoritarian, bureaucratic, unaccountable centralized government. Pollster Scott Rasmussen’s latest telephone poll found that 71 percent of those surveyed are at least somewhat angry at the current policies being pursued in Washington, with fully 46 percent “Very Angry.”
The 71 percent figure is up 5 percentage points since September, but get this — the 46 percent is up 10 points. And it doesn’t take a political genius to see why this public anger is so widespread and intensifying. More than half of those surveyed by Rasmussen, 52 percent, say neither the Democrats nor the Republicans understand what needs to be done in the nation.
Among Republicans, 65 percent say that, while 59 percent of independents hold the same view. These numbers are down a bit from September, but they will surge back up — possibly way up — if the Senate approves its version of health care reform around Christmas time.
The public’s anger is reflected in other ways. Only 9 percent of those surveyed by Rasmussen trust the judgment of Washington politicians, compared with 74 percent who trust the judgment of the people (Remember Bill Buckley and the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone book?).
Three-fourths of the public looks at the nation’s capital and sees special interests feasting with their friends in government at the public till, according to Rasmussen. Nearly as many, 68 percent, believe Big Government and Big Business work together against the public interest.
And being a member of Congress is the least respected job one can hold, according to Rasmussen’s surveys. The most respected jobs? Being a small-business owner who creates jobs and opportunities for people willing to work, and pastors and other religious leaders who answer to a higher authority than Washington bureaucrats.
Second, as Martin clearly understands, people are increasingly angry because they are being ignored by Washington’s politicians. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is hell-bent on jamming Obamacare through the Senate by Christmas despite the fact public opposition to the proposal has been steadily growing for months.
One million or more people rallied in Washington on Sept. 12 to show their opposition to growing government, but Democratic congressional leaders stick their heads in the ground, refusing to heed the public outcry.
“Senators now change the rules of who can enter the Senate Building in order to keep constituents at bay; they take their phones off the hook to ignore our calls; refuse to accept faxes and emails; refuse repeated requests to meet with constituents, and on the rare occasions they do respond they send form letters thanking us for supporting them,” Martin told me in an e-mail.
“Senators call American citizens ‘evil-mongers’ and ‘radicals.’ Their disdain for the majority of American citizens is an outrage,” she said.
She’s absolutely right, of course, which is why a bunch of senators who voted for cloture on the health care bill are receiving symbolic rubber chickens this week from Martin and her compatriots: “The chickens will come home to roost in 2010, and Americans are paying close attention to the health care legislation vote.”
Meanwhile, the Washington Establishment scoffs and keeps its head securely buried in the sand. That is why it will never see what is coming until it is too late … for it.
Mark Tapscott is editorial page editor of The Washington Examiner and proprietor of Tapscott’s Copy Desk blog on washingtonexaminer.com.
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