Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is upset at the growing movement and the media’s coverage of it, hoping that a modern day version of protests from five decades ago isn’t being recaptured now.
“It’s really important for us not to give any legitimacy to these people in the streets,” said King on Laura Ingraham’s radio show Friday evening. “I remember what happened in the 1960s when the left-wing took to the streets and somehow the media glorified them and it ended up shaping policy. We can’t allow that to happen.”
Let's think about that. If it were up to Steve King, only property owners would be allowed to vote. If it were up to Peter King, there would be no coverage of Occupy Wall Street or anywhere else. Republicans are publicly running on a platform to disenfranchise tens of millions at the voting booth and in the media. They are absolutely terrified of the common people having a voice. Everything they are trying to accomplish legislatively is about stifling that voice, about ending the discussion, about rolling back rights, about the most base definition of conservatism: the unchanging prevention of progress in favor of not the status quo, but the status quo ante.
"We can't allow that to happen," King says. What, exactly, can he not allow to happen? Dissent against the Republican agenda? Minorities voting? The people taking to the streets to protest against his real employers? King is begging Americans to be part of his collective "we" here as well. Who is the "we" here? The 1% at the top? Why does King get to make that call? He certainly seems to think he has that power.
So yes, Occupy Together is now much more than a thorn in the side of the corporate Republicans and their mouthpieces. It's a legitimate threat to them, and the GOP is treating them as such for a very real reason.
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