Small Businessmen Push Back Against Obama

The Obama campaign is reeling from the fallout over the president’s demand that small business people pay higher taxes because they owe their success to the government. In a few unscripted minutes, Obama, by saying what he really thinks, dealt his own campaign a severe blow. Today groups of small business owners in 24 cities rallied against Obama:

The Romney campaign has been heavily pressing their “you didn’t build that” attacks for the past ten days and Wednesday is their biggest push yet with events with small business owners in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Nevada. …

In events at small businesses in locations as varied as Waukesha, Wis. to Palm Beach, Fla. to Columbus, Ohio, entrepreneurs will express their anger at the “you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen” line.

Lou Ramos, a small business owner from Tampa, will be at his local event. He owns an information technology and computer training company called Value Enterprise Solutions, Inc. and he said the president’s comments made him “almost throw up when I heard it.”

Ramos is a 64 year old Hispanic veteran, serving in the military from 1973-97, including two tours at the Pentagon, and he said he did read and watch all of the president’s comments in context, not just the two sentences continually highlighted by the campaign.

“I heard the whole thing and I read it,” Ramos told ABC News, mentioning he did like Obama when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. “I heard the whole thing…The guy was talking sincere…This guy thinks success is about government hand outs and not perseverance.”

Caught on tape, Obama has no rejoinder except the lame assertion that his inflammatory words were taken “out of context.” In Raleigh, rally participants pounced on that evasion:

[Former Raleigh mayor and North Carolina GOP chairman Tom Fetzer] read the speech the President gave earlier this month in Roanoke, Virginia word for word during the event, to underscore they weren’t taking it out of context.

“If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own,” he read.

But it was the line, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen,” that offended so many Americans.

“I didn’t take it out of context, I just, I think it was a jab. I don’t know why,” Snoopy’s co-owner Larry Cerilli said.

Snoopy’s co-owner put up this sign:

This group was in Tampa:

This is, obviously, a good theme for Republicans. I’m sure the Obama campaign hopes it won’t have to produce too many more “I don’t hate small business” ads.

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