President Obama is still in their corner. He’s still trying to convince us that these freaks are simply giving voice to the “frustration” average Americans feel, while not admitting that these little socialists are the products of the very ideology and class-warfare that he’s been peddling under the guise of “hope and change” for three years now.

I wish he’d just come out and call them his comrades.

Now, enter Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain: he sees the hippies for what they are. Over the weekend he called them out for being “jealous’ Americans who “play the victim card” to get their hands on other people’s stuff.

Unlike Obama, Cain understands how business works: he knows what it’s like to work for living, to manage employees, and to have to make a profit. Thus he knows the only thing these dirty hippies are accomplishing is the destruction of someone’s bottom line.

Even Mayor Michael Bloomberg understands this and has himself gone on record about how the “Occupy Wall Street” movement is hurting business: “If you focus for example on driving the banks out of New York City, you know those are our jobs … You can’t have it both ways: If you want jobs you have to assist companies and give them confidence to go and hire people.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday, Cain also observed that the union backing of the protests appears to have an ulterior motive. He believes the unions want these protests to serve as a “distraction so that…people won’t focus on the failed policies of the Obama administration.”

My guess is this is also why Obama’s encouraging these freaks in their bid to block bridges and stop traffic. For as long as the cameras are on the hippies they won’t be on Obama’s plummeting poll numbers, his inability to get a bill through Congress, or the unemployment figures that still hover around 9.1%.

The bottom line: the hippies are classic leftists (just like Obama). Thus they seek to destroy the foundations of freedom in the name of a 60s-revolution redo.

Cain, on the other hand, understands the economy and treasures the opportunity a free market provides to everyone regardless of race or socio-economic status. Therefore, when these hippies “protest Wall Street and the bankers” he knows they are “basically saying [they’re] anti-capitalist.”

This provides a stark contrast for 2012. Do we want four more years of a 60’s radicalism, where hippies literally camp in the streets while someone else pays their way? Or do we want to start moving back toward the city on a shining hill of which Reagan spoke, where personal responsibility and ordered liberty guarantee a freedom for all?

Cain is clearly casting his vote with Reagan.

Capitol Police arrested ten people on the second floor of the Cannon House Office Building at a sit-in this afternoon.  The demonstrators had crowded into the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a print-out of the health care bill, intending to tear up the bill in protest.

“It was a mess.  There was paper all over the hallway,” said Jeanette Beam, who traveled from Georgia to join the protest.  “They took a little old lady away in plastic handcuffs.”

The arrests, which happened a little before three o’clock, prompted plenty of chatter but little surprise.  Earlier in the day, an organizer with a megaphone had explained the plan for the sit-in.  “The police know we’re coming,” he announced.  “No one has to get arrested if they don’t want to.”

The protesters were part of a crowd of 10,000 that gathered on Capitol Hill to protest the Democratic health care bill.  The “emergency house call” was initiated by Rep. Michele Bachmann and organized by Americans for Prosperity.

Bachmann greeted the crowd from the Capitol steps: “You came.  You came to your House.”  When her remarks were interrupted by a chant of “Kill the bill,” Bachmann joked, “Oh, don’t hold back.  Tell them how you really feel!”  She continued, “Kill the bill – that’s exactly what you’re going to tell them.”

The lady from Minnesota was joined by several other Republican congressmen, including House Minority Whip Eric Cantor.  Also on hand were celebrities like John Voight, Mark Levin, and John Ratzenberger, famous for playing Cliff Clavin on “Cheers.”

“We have to remember that these people are not the philosophical descendants of JFK and Tip O’Neill,” said Ratzenberger.  “They’re the philosophical descendants of Abbie Hoffman, Saul Alinsky, and Wavy Gravy.”

“They’re Woodstock Democrats.”

The presser’s one sour note came when Rep. Todd Akin led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance – and then flubbed the words.  The word he skipped was “indivisible.”  The crowd kept going through this Freudian slip, and Akin caught up to them in time for “liberty and justice for all.”

After the press conference ended at one-thirty, the crowd walked across the street to the House office buildings in order to confront their representatives in person.  Lines ran along Independence Avenue for entire blocks as hundreds lined up to go through security.

The lines moved slowly, but most of the protesters had made it inside by four o’clock.

Queued constituents chatted about how far they had traveled.  “They chartered buses for us,” said one who had traveled to Washington from Ohio.  “They planned to have just one bus coming from Columbus, but yesterday they had to add two more.”

Others cracked jokes about Pelosi: “I wonder if the public option will pay for her botox.”

One man, who had lost track of his group, tried to explain his location over a cell phone.  “Can you see me?  I’m wearing the Gadsden flag as a cape.”  His description would have been specific enough in most crowds, but, at yesterday’s rally, at least a dozen other protesters were wearing the same thing.