Rove: Wall St. Protesters Disorganized, While Tea Party Focused

The Wall Street Protests are not the liberal alternative to the tea party, declares Republican strategist Karl Rove.

The former White House aide and political adviser to former President George W. Bush writes in an Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal that President Barack Obama and other Democrats should distance themselves from Occupy Wall Street.

“Democrats hope Occupy Wall Street will boost their party's chances in next year's election as the tea party did for the GOP in 2010. But Democratic leaders are wrong in believing that Occupy Wall Street is the liberal alternative to the tea party,” writes Rove, adding that the president risks alienating swing voters by embracing the protesters.

“It could further diminish the president's support from center-left business leaders, already sick of Mr. Obama's class warfare and faux populism,” Rove contends. “Appearing to condone the crude personal behavior of Occupy Wall Street protestors can also further erode Mr. Obama's standing with culturally conservative blue-collar voters.”

Rove cautions that it’s a big miscalculation for Obama and other Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to court the Wall Street protesters when it’s not even clear they want to go on a date with Democrats.

Unlike the tea party, which reveres the Constitution and wants to change laws to restore the country to prosperity, Occupy Wall Street is unfocused and disorganized, Rove says.

“The tea party is a middle-class movement of people who want limited government, less spending, less debt, low taxes, and the repeal of Obamacare,” Rove insists. “Occupy Wall Street isn't a movement. It's a series of events populated by a weird cast of disaffected characters, ranging from anarchists and anti-Semites to socialists and LaRouchies. What they have in common is an amorphous anger aimed at banks, investors, rich people and bourgeois values.”

Rove’s advice to Obama and other Democrats: “Before they go much further with this courtship, the president and other Democrats need to remember it’s always dangerous to associate with people who are just plain kooky.”