Grass Roots: The president says he didn't watch any of Glenn Beck's "Restore Honor" rally on the National Mall. That's not surprising. Democrats and the White House haven't been listening to the people for awhile.

Whistling past the political graveyard looming for his party in November, President Obama dismissed the crowd gathered to hear the Fox News pundit, telling Brian Williams of the NBC Nightly News, "It's not surprising that someone like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of (the American people) ... "

He dismissed this crowd just as he and his party dismissed the "angry mobs" that descended on health care town meetings wanting to know why their government no longer wanted to hear their voices or seek out the consent of the governed. Those people were also said to have been "stirred up" by political opponents and conservative talk radio.

This genuine grass-roots movement was dismissed as "astroturfing" by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others. But their anger did not have to be manufactured. It was a quite natural response to a government that is bankrupting their children and grandchildren as it spends money we don't have on things that don't work.

"Mr. Beck" didn't manufacture the people on the Mall. He merely has given them a voice and a focal point, and a reminder that we are endowed with inalienable rights from a higher authority than any gaggle of senators and representatives. "We the people" assembled on the Mall, not an angry mob stirred up by rabble-rousers.

The movement that met on the Mall and had coalesced into what became known as the Tea Party comes from different parties and, despite what the so-called mainstream media say, different ethnic groups and nationalities. They have one thing in common: They are tired of being ignored. They are opposed to the kind of arrogance that convinces a president that maybe he just didn't make himself clear enough and he only needs to make more speeches in a perpetual campaign to get it through our thick skulls.

It is the kind of arrogance that Pelosi demonstrated when she said we'd have to pass health care reform to find out what's in it and that government needs to intervene between a patient and a doctor. People are tired of votes bought through Cornhusker kickbacks and bills written behind closed doors that are voted on without being read.

The Democrats push health care that Americans don't want by overwhelming numbers. The feds sue the sovereign state of Arizona over the wishes of a majority of Americans that want secure borders. Then the secretary of state slams Arizona, citing SB1070 as a human rights violation to the United Nations.

The American people see the disconnect between "saved" jobs and near double-digit unemployment. They are weary of a government so out-of-touch that once again we seem to have taxation without representation. They see a government making war on job-creators, punishing success and rewarding failure, redistributing wealth while creating none. They see an energy policy that produces no energy in order to save a planet that is not in danger.

Ignore that crowd on the Mall at your peril, Mr. President. That "certain portion" of the people grows bigger every day and by November your party may lose big in all 57 states you campaigned in.