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Originally Posted by awval999
How does this end? Honestly? With tanks rolling in? Feds can't back down here IMO.
Obama's enforcement rational is hard to figure out. Immigration he's a hard ass. Wall street gets a total pass. If you look like a terrorist I'll drone you. BP go ahead and drill again. FDA tightens up. Drug laws, eh, who cares?
Maybe his tendency is toward a largely political calculation here? Maybe a national security one? As someone else posted the number of right wing militant groups is at an all time high. I suppose these two concerns affect each other.
Immediate bad consequences follow a gunfight. If people die Obama will be reflexively accused of mishandling the situation. The second guessers will open their now quiet mouths. Tea party and militia membership will grow and that actually messes with all of us. Remember, these are the people who damn near caused a suicidal financial collapse. There is a non-zero chance that the rancher's criminal cause could morph into a real and violent movement or be absorbed into the current tea party and take it in a worse direction. Ostensibly, if you don't actually read a newspaper and just watch fOX news (and that describes a great many americans) this rancher is a sympathetic fellow. The trivial details of his case, like the fact he is a thief, won't matter as people rally behind the larger issue of the government being evil, an issue for which Bundy's contrived circumstance is very emotionally emblematic.
The consequence of doing nothing is also clearly unacceptable. That will only embolden the militias and others in their belief that gun violence or the threat thereof is a viable political strategy. There is no way Obama does nothing.
What Obama wants to do is diffuse this quickly and quietly- quickly so that clarity of consequences is conveyed to this group and onlookers and quietly to minimize the political fallout. I suspect what they are doing now is taking pictures and gathering info so that they can arrest these people later one at a time. If they just keep staying at the ranch then the feds might try to cut off their supplies and force a quiet surrender. Obama is going to handle this with finesse. However if it drags on too long at a certain point Obama will just go in. Maybe he will try to use non-lethals or something but if the crazies are just determined to see what the feds are gonna do Obama will show them.