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To: r9etb
Folks will judge conservatives' stridency against the speech actually given. And we'll end up looking silly -- which, in politics, is a deadly disease.

Sorry, just see it completely differently.

Myself, and everybody I know who objected to the speech, couldn't care less about the content of the speech.

We objected to the idea that a politician should direct the government-run educational apparatus to force our children into being an unwilling audience for his speechifying.

He could have read Dr. Suess or the bible, it wouldn't have mattered to me. I don't want him talking to my child without my participation and agreement.

That was the what the controversy was, and is, about. It was never about content.

39 posted on 09/08/2009 10:40:33 AM PDT by dead (I've got my eye out for Mullah Omar.)
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To: dead
Myself, and everybody I know who objected to the speech, couldn't care less about the content of the speech.

I happen to agree with you on the factual aspects of this.

But that's not the important thing here: what's important are the political perceptions generated by the conservative pre-complaints, as compared to the speech actually given.

If Obama gives an unobjectionable speech -- and he will --he can use the situation to quite effectively portray all conservatives as shrill and obstructionist.

Next time we have something to complain about, we're first going to have to overcome the perception of hysteria that Obama has been able to pin on us by making it a non-issue.

Is it rational or factual? No, of course not. But modern politics is not particularly rational: a lot, maybe most, of modern politics is about creating perceptions about the other guy. If you can make the other guy look silly now, he'll be seen as silly when he really needs to look statesmanlike.

41 posted on 09/08/2009 10:49:32 AM PDT by r9etb
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