Interesting Republican protest against Obama:
The Republican Party of Dane County, the Republican Party of Wisconsin and the Dane County Young Republicans held a "Billionaires for Obama" protest Tuesday immediately following President Barack Obama's rally on Library Mall.
It was not a typical protest- the satirical event was intended to raise awareness of Obama's policies that the RPDC believe only benefit the country's "billionaires."
Protestor Jeff Waksman spoke at yesterday's event, at which the protesters portrayed Fortune 500 CEOs such as George Soros, Paul Allen, Jeffrey Immelt and Robert Eckert, as well as U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.
"We didn't want to do a standard protest. Instead, we wanted to draw people's attention with a sense of humor," said Waksman, who portrayed the role of George Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management.
The group said its goal was to raise awareness about how Obama's economic stimulus benefits billionaires more than working-class people.
The substance of the populist attacks is, to say the least, pretty shaky. Wall Street is heavily tilting toward the GOP, in part because of Democrats' financial reform. The people gaining coverage from the Affordable Care Act were assuredly not rich. I've never seen anybody even attempt tp argue that the stimulus transfers money to the rich. (What, billionaires want their $300 tax credit and maybe a sweet job in highway construction?) And, of course, the parties are currently fighting over the GOP's fervent insistence on giving huge tax cuts to the richest 2% of the public.
But what's interesting here is that Republicans feel that the most promising line of attack is to associate Obama with wealth. It betrays a real lack of confidence in an economic agenda that's heavily centered around opposing downward redistribution of wealth.