You have doubtless heard by now of the unfortunate confrontation between House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) and some anti-war folks in the hallway outside his office. Unaware that he was being taped, Obey candidly demonstrated the disdain our public servants sometimes have for their constituents who pay their salaries. It appears that liberals cannot even be civil to each other. Michelle has the video and the transcript at the link.
A little background: Obey is trying to end the war in Iraq through a piece of legislation that will remove the president's authority to wage the war. The citizens he encounters in the hallway are apparently anti-war activists who want him simply to vote to defund the war. Obey doesn't want to do that because it will put the troops in the field in jeopardy and take resources away from veterans' programs and hospitals.
Obey quickly grew impatient with the woman, who is evidently the mother of an Iraq war vet in his third deployment there, and acts pretty much like the south end of a north-bound horse in this intramural squabble among opponents to the Iraq war. In the process he offers some choice descriptions of those groups who are pressuring congressional Democrats to take more radically decisive action to end the war - at one point calling them "idiot liberals."
The incident reminded us of Peggy Noonan's quip that elected officials of both parties are contemptuous of their base but that Democrats tend to think of theirs as "barking mad."
Obey later apologized when he learned that his whole ugly performance is now on YouTube.
RLC
