Obama calls opponents of his energy plan 'ignorant'

By Ed Lasky

A new kind of politician, a new kind of politics. A man on a higher plane who is going to be positive and talk about the issues. The arrogance and the insults just keep leaking through, however.

Recall the bitter small town people who cling to guns, the accusations that others are racists. And now if people critique his silly energy plan -which is factually wrong -they are ignorant.

Obama on GOP: 'It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.'

Barack Obama:

"So I told them something simple," Obama said. "I said, 'You know what? You can inflate your tires to the proper levels and that if everybody in America inflated their tires to the proper level, we would actually probably save more oil than all the oil we'd get from John McCain drilling right below his feet there, or wherever he was going to drill.'"

(Note: that's not accurate, as we fact-checked last week. But the larger point about energy savings is correct.)

"So now the Republicans are going around - this is the kind of thing they do. I don't understand it! They’re going around, they're sending like little tire gauges, making fun of this idea as if this is 'Barack Obama's energy plan.'

"Now two points, one, they know they're lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they're making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.

Name-calling-how juvenile. How unpresidential.

Jim Geragahty reminds us of an earlier incarnation of Obama:

If you're going to call someone "ignorant," you probably ought to try to avoid repeating the misstatement that got you into trouble in the first place.

Remember when Obama was running around saying, "Now, one of the things I'm proud of at the beginning of this campaign I said, this is a different time. This is an extraordinary time. We've got to run a different kind of campaign. So we're not going to go around doing negative ads. We're going to keep it positive. We're going to talk about the issues"?

Now his opponents "take pride in being ignorant."

All statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date. All of them.

Barack Obama is right. We should not care about the color of his skin. We should care about how thin his skin is....