Protesting Barack Obama Brings Tea Party and Occupy Side-by-Side in San Francisco

The Blaze reported yesterday on the massive Tea Party rally that met President Obama in San Francisco during the final leg of his three-day West Coast Fundraising tour. After nearly three-and-a-half years of political divisiveness in Washington, the President may have finally succeeded in bringing two opposing groups together in California; Occupy San Francisco and the Bay Area Tea Party.

Both groups were protesting outside the San Francisco Masonic Center Thursday, where the president was speaking to more than 2,500 people at an event where tickets started at $100. The San Francisco Chronicle reports "hundreds of demonstrators - from the Tea Party to Occupy - railed outside against his policies on the economy, the environment and contraception."

The event was Obama's fourth of the day, following a pair of $38,500-per-person fundraisers, including one with high-tech business leaders that reporters were not allowed to attend. Fund 47 writes of the demonstration:

"On February 16, 2012, the Bay Area Tea Party Movement protested outside the San Francisco Masonic Center as President Obama held a major fundraiser. Principal Tea Party organizer Sally Zelikovsky, of Bay Area Patriots, estimated 200 men and women in the group's designated protest area -- at full capacity with spillover.

In the adjacent protest area was a much smaller group, a mix of Occupy Wall Street activists from around the Bay Area and marijuana legalization advocates (smoking up a storm). OWS held a number of signs supporting Obama's national contraception/abortifacient insurance mandate. Legalization advocates held placards that said "Let States Regulate!" (marijuana). The groups protested together, oblivious to the contradiction of 'Let States Regulate!' and a national healthcare insurance mandate which prohibits states from setting their own insurance standards."

PJ Media blogger Zombie writes about the odd bedfellows in San Francisco:

"Media pundits have often tried to point out the similarities between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement, in a futile attempt to get the two groups to merge. Unfortunately, the differences were too great, and we have yet to see the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protesting against the same thing side-by-side at the same protest.

That is, until now.

The unthinkable finally happened last night in San Francisco: the Tea Party shared a protest with the Occupiers, both groups angry with the same person."

The blogger posted a few photos from the protests that you may not see everyday:

The blogger writes that while both sides were there to protest Obama, unfortunately a "mutual distrust and disdain still divided the two camps."

More videos and striking pictures from Thursday's protest at PJmedia.com