Sarah Advocates the Harry Weisiger Approach

“….that bumper sticker that maybe you’ll see on the next Subaru drivin’ by, an Obama bumper sticker, you should stop the driver and say, ‘So how is that hopey changey think workin’ out for ya?’” Sarah Palin Speech, Searchlight Nevada, at the 2.58 mark

Exactly how her fans are supposed to “stop the driver” is, of course, left up to them. “ Maybe Sarah was inspired by the recent case of Harry Weisiger, that guy in Nashville who rammed his SUV into a Toyota Camry with an Obama sticker and pushed it onto the sidewalk. Instead of leaving the scene of the accident, I guess Weisiger could have run up to the drivers’ side to ask about how the hopey changey thing was going, but I have a feeling Mark Duren, the Toyota’s driver, wanted to talk about something else.

Which is likely to be a problem faced by any Sarah Palin fan who tries this, even in less violent ways, like planting themselves in front of cars and waving their arms, or getting the Obama supporter to pull over by following closely behind it in their truck and honking and pointing at a rear wheel as if there were something wrong, or just pursuing them into a cul-de-sac and cutting off any avenue of escape. The primary thing in the mind of the Subaru driver is going to be, either “what’s wrong?” or “For God’s sake, who are you people and what do you want,” which is not exactly conducive to a meaningful political discussion.

Still, a tea-partier who does the cul-de-sac thing a few times, especially if the tea partier in question has a gun rack in his truck, and prefaces his questioning of the driver with assurances that “I’m not a violent man,” will probably report back with a gratifyingly high level of panicked agreement from drivers confronted in this manner. “Yes, yes, things are going terribly, and I’ll take the Obama sticker off right now! (scrabbles desperately at bumper sticker with fingernails) Just let me and kids go, okay?”

It’s nice to see, along with her assurances that she’s not advocating violence, that Palin is doing her part to lessen political divisiveness in this country.