Obama: No dissent, please

Here's a shot of common sense, courtesy of the San Francisco Examiner:

Americans are finally getting a good look at the man in the White House. They've been thrilled by his speeches, love his kids and almost desperately want to believe he is who they voted for. It turns out, however, that he simply can’t tolerate disagreement.

In President Barack Obama's view, those who disagree with him really ought to just shut up. His critics, after all, are the people responsible for the problems he was elected to solve, dupes and hirelings of those responsible, or dangerous kooks.

The administration has moved to discredit those who oppose his health care policies, for example, by labeling them neo-Nazis, right-wing lunatics or witting/unwitting tools of giant insurance companies. "I don't want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking," the president told a crowd of supporters in Virginia last week. "I want them to get out of the way."

His congressional allies are parroting this line to explain the opposition to Obama's policies at town-hall meetings. Some have canceled these meetings altogether or are screening attendees to exclude critics of the president.

Here's a nugget from last year's presidential campaign. Obama's predesessor in the Senate, Peter Fitzgerald, who also served with the president in the Illinois State Senate, made some revealing comments about the man who claimed to be bi-partisan:

And if I think back to my days in Springfield with him, Senator Obama, I don't ever really recall working across party lines. He was a very partisan and ideological Democrat who represented a district that really was probably 90% Democrat, and certainly I saw him as reflective of his district in that he was just one of those state senators from Chicago who viewed the Democratic party as being right 100% of the time and the Republican party wrong 100% of the time. He's not one to work across party lines.

Technorati tags: politics Democrats health universal health care socialism Peter fitzgerald Barack Obama Obama