The Focus-less & Faux Occupy Wall Street Protest - A Gift to Republican Candidates

We are a short twelve weeks or so away from the beginning of the serious Republican Presidential primary elections.

Polling at this time shows Mitt Romney in the lead for the nomination, and the punditry world says that the race is down to three candidates: Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Herman Cain. There is still some chance that Gingrich, Bachmann or Santorum could surge in these remaining weeks. The unexpected is not impossible.

Each of these six serious Presidential contenders must look for opportunities to stand out and send the signal to the millions in the waiting conservative masses “I am the leader you are looking for.” Few such opportunities will likely arise, but one is staring them in the face right now.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is an opportunity for one or more of the candidates to step into the lead by offering a message that will resonate with a broad swath of American voters.

Calling out the OWS movement for the falsity that it is, and more importantly, putting this faux protest into stark political context would offer the Republican(s) who address it the opportunity to show their free-market supporting, pro-American values credentials, and simultaneously to link this nutty protest to the Obama administration, which has expressed support for it.

Herman Cain’s willingness to refer to the OWS protesters as “jealous” and as people who “want to take someone else’s Cadillac,” is, in this writer’s opinion, the most significant reason for his recent rise in the polls. And that is not a criticism of Herman Cain, who is actually saying a lot of things that conservatives want to hear.

Conservatives and Republicans are waiting for the candidate who will speak in broad terms, beyond specifics on the many issues we face, and give voice to their deep concerns that the country is heading down a very far left and very wrong path. The OWS movement has provided an opportunity to make that case.

Consider:

  • OWS “demands” include ending the war in Afghanistan, using force to impose social and economic justice, providing free education all the way through college and forgiving all student loans (and one “spokesperson” advocated forgiving all debt worldwide), ending corporate greed, imposing trade tariffs, ending capitalism, supporting same-sex marriage, admitting the “truth” about 9/11, demanding more (unspecified) environmental controls, and a whole host of other left-leaning, undefined and often incoherent demands.
  • The fact that George Soros, The Ruckus Society, the Tides Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, a conglomeration of very left and very elitist groups, have emerged as apparent behind the scenes OWS supporters, speaks volumes about the fact that this is no organic, grassroots movement, but is rather an orchestrated anti-freedom and anti-free markets effort.
  • Add in the Transport Workers Union, the United Auto Workers and the Service Employees International Union, whose members also showed up to march, and the picture of a movement orchestrated behind the scenes by powers on the American Left is nearly complete. Notably, those unions are among the main beneficiaries of Obama’s 2009 $787 billion stimulus package.
  • The Working Families Party (whose website advocates for paid sick days for all workers, green jobs and green homes, affordable housing, health care for all, and a whole host of “give me everything for almost nothing,” pro-strong centralized government demands) ran an ad on Craigslist seeking paid workers to join the “fight to hold Wall Street accountable,” apparently part of a now familiar pattern in the American Left of paying people to participate in “spontaneous” protests. Their ad is titled: FIGHT TO HOLD WALLSTREET ACCOUNTABLE NOW! MAKE A DIFFERNENCE (sic) GET PAID!
  • College students among the OWS ranks may be in part excused under the reported Winston Churchill reasoning, “If you're not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at forty you have no brain,” but many of the adults among them are genuine advocates of socialist thinking. This is the dangerous path many Americans see our current President taking us down, and they are waiting for the Republican candidate who will say that.
  • President Obama has expressed support for OWS, and we need to tie it to him, to make him own it.

While many on the conservative side advocate auditing the Fed, ending crony capitalism, and punishing illegality on Wall Street, the political right supports more transparency and integrity, and genuine free markets, which includes celebrating and encouraging, instead of demonizing, success, and allowing businesses to fail.

On the other side, the underlying point (if there is one) that the OWS is making is that they are against free markets, against successful individuals and companies, and ultimately against the liberties we Americans enjoy as part of a culture and society built on personal responsibility and individual freedom.

Our country is in desperate need of a strong leader who will speak powerfully and persuasively on a whole host of specific issues, and more broadly in defense of the importance and greatness of America’s founding principles, individual freedoms and free markets, all of which are under attack by OWS. Americans will leap to support the candidate who signals that he or she sees this protest as symbolic of the struggle for the heart and soul of America and her future, and who is willing to denounce the protesters’ demands as utterly un-American.

(In the interests of full disclosure, I supported Mitt Romney in 2008, and support Texas Governor Rick Perry now, although I am most strongly in the camp of those who support whoever wins the Republican bid and challenges and removes the current White House resident.)

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Why no mention of the true republican front runner Ron Paul? He's won several straw polls, is the most consistent candidate running, and has great support all over the country.
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