Posted on 09/08/2009 7:13:33 AM PDT by myknowledge
Conservatives in the US are advocating a national truancy day next week because of President Barack Obama's plan to address the nation's students.
The White House hopes next Tuesday's speech will be watched live by students and teachers across the nation but the President's critics say it is an attempt to indoctrinate rather than motivate the country's youth.
The controversy highlights how much ground Mr Obama has lost in his first six months and how aggressive an opposition he is facing.
Next week President Obama will visit a Washington area high school where he intends to deliver a 15 to 20 minute speech encouraging students to work hard and continue on in school.
It is a conservative message and one impossible to dispute.
Yet in a sign of how dysfunctional and poisonous politics in America has become the White House has been asked to release the text of the President's message well ahead of delivery so that parents can decide whether or not they will send children to school on that day to hear the address.
Conservatives like Andrea Tantaros are comparing President Obama's address to the propaganda of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il.
"It's historic in the sense that it's unprecedented. They do this type of thing in North Korea and the former Soviet Union," she said.
Two Republican members of the House Education and Labor Committee have written to the White House asking for the early release of the text so parents have ample time to review the President's speech.
That criticism has already had an impact.
The Education Department has changed its suggested classroom activity to follow the address, from children writing letters on the politically charged subject of "what they could do to help the President" to "how they can achieve their educational goals".
Six months ago there would have been no qualms about Mr Obama giving an address like this to the nation's students, but Republican strategist John Feehery says the administration has squandered that political goodwill.
"The right-wing base doesn't like them but they're also losing credibility with more independent voters," he said.
"It has less to do with his actual speech than more to with the actions of earlier this year of taking over the auto industry, taking over these different industries and then the cap and trade vote and then this vote on health care," he said.
"All these things kind of make people very uneasy about too much of a government presence in their lives."
Popularity fall
After a devastating August that saw humiliating town hall demonstrations over Mr Obama's plans to reform health he has suffered an alarming drop-off in personal popularity.
Weakened by the debate, conservatives are determined to hobble his administration and make it seem ineffective and unable to govern from its very first year.
It is not just the right wing. Even moderate Republicans like Senator John McCain are more frequently toeing the party line since the Democrat was elected to the White House.
An analysis of Senator McCain's voting record since Mr Obama was elected President found he was far less independent than in the past.
Conservatives have their eye on the mid-term elections and the White House in just over three years' time. They have already been whipped into a frenzy by right-wing radio and commentators.
They will do whatever it takes even if it means undermining a message with which they agree just because it is a Democrat President delivering it to the country's 13 to 17 year olds.
“Ve haf vays of making your children listen to our speeches......”
Gads, there is no limit to my contempt for the Obamaloon and his ill-educated associates.
In any real world, he’d be regarded as the penultimate buffoon- heading an art-school cadre of malcontents and spazzmos.
Instead this is another botched job by this administration.
This guy is mentally on thin ice whenever he encounters resistance, so the more people resist the closer we come to the day when he displays his instability.
If Congress can be persuaded to go along with him on this, they'll have to have secret service people bullying him away from every pond where he wants to prove he can walk on water. If they halt this bill, he'll go either suddenly or rapidly over the edge and it'll become clear why he's kept his medical records hidden.
Regards
And Democrats didn’t like it when HW spoke to students either. Hating everything the president, who is from the other party, is not a new thing.
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