Video: Obama gets Earful from Tea Party Member in Iowa Audience

There was a time when Barack Obama represented the angry masses who had a problem with the establishment. While conducting a town hall in Iowa this week, he found himself to be the figurehead of the establishment, on the other end of an exchange with a man who represents an angry constituency - the Tea Party. First up, the video. As Obama was wrapping up his Q&A by seeking out the person who would ask the last question, Ryan Rhodes, a Tea Party activist stood up and shouted the same question multiple times:

"How can you bring people together when your VP called the Tea Party 'terrorists'?"

Though you can't hear the question being asked, you can hear Obama's responses as he tries to ignore Rhodes in favor of another questioner. It doesn't work. Rhodes continues to ask the question until he gets Obama to react. It carried the ring of a Saul Alinsky tactic being used against the president.

According to Alinsky, the main job of the organizer is to bait an opponent into reacting. “The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength.”

Rhodes got Obama to react by comparing any charge that the Tea Party might have been called 'terrorists' to charges that he (Obama) had been called a 'socialist' who wasn't born in the US.

Via Breitbart:



You'll note that Obama said he would talk with the man one on one afterward. According to Fox News, it was difficult to hear what was said between Obama and Rhodes but they did seem to capture the tenor of the discussion:

In an interview later with Fox News, Rhodes claimed that the president had insisted that Biden had not made the original comment.

“He just denied it. He said the vice president didn't make any of those assertions,” Rhodes said. “If he doesn’t want to even admit what was on TV nationally -- all over the place -- then how can you have a conversation?”

Rhodes added that Obama brushed him aside. “Then he said, ‘We can't have a conversation because you're saying I called you a terrorist,’” recalled Rhodes. “The fact is it demonstrates the deep divide that he is unwilling to negotiate without going after the other side. The whole day was about going after Republicans and talking about how unreasonable they are.”

Note that Rhodes focused on one item exclusively. There are countless problems the Tea Party has with Obama but Rhodes picked one and hammered on it until he finally got a reaction. That reaction was, in effect, one that insinuated that because the president is called names, it's ok for his administration to call people names. Uh, someone needs to tell Obama that's not presidential.

h/t Weasel Zippers