Some thoughts on the slanderous R-word, from Frank J:
…here is an opportunity for Obama to really show he’s post-racial. He could say that people who toss around charges of racism at everyone who disagrees with them are nothing but poison to a political debate. They are as useful to the issue of race as having a Ku Klux Klan member on TV, ranting undisputed. But Obama can’t speak out against mindless charges of racism, because if the Democrats lose the issue of racism, they lose everything.
Yes, don’t look for him to avail himself of the opportunity any time soon.
[Update a couple minutes later]
George-Bush-by-proxie syndrome:
The origins of manufactured “politics of personal destruction” is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based “progressive” street agitator titled, “There Is Only the Fight.”
Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky’s techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, “Rules for Radicals.” In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight – all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.
Here’s hoping for a big backfire.
Except they’re not really “progressives,” any more than they are liberals. This isn’t progress — tyranny over individuals and individualists is the oldest idea in civilization.
[Update a few minutes later]
Fighting for his presidency, not reform:
…his end run damaged what was once his greatest asset — the belief among voters that he was something different.
Endless evasions and then a crackdown on opponents has made Obama look like just another president — and a cynical one at that.
Emotionally invoking his grandmother’s November death over the weekend to shame his critics was just the latest in a series of shoddy ploys.
Can President Obama escape the wreckage of his health care effort? Yes, but only if he stops being so slippery and starts leveling with voters.
Shorter answer: no.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Democrats misread their mandate:
Our system of government depends not only on how many votes you win, but how broadly distributed those votes are. This prevents one section or faction from railroading another. It is evident in the Electoral College and the House, but above all in the Senate, where 44 senators come from states that voted against Obama last year. That’s a consequence of the fact that Obama’s election – while historic in many respects, and the largest we have seen in 20 years – was still not as broad-based as many would like to believe. Bully for Obama and the Democrats that they have 60 Senators, but the fact remains that thirteen of them come from McCain states, indicating that the liberals don’t get the full run of the show.
For whatever reason, the Obama administration has acted as if those hagiographical comparisons to FDR were apt. It let its liberal allies from the coasts drive the agenda and write the key bills, and it’s played straw man semantic games to marginalize the opposition. For all the President’s moaning in The Audacity of Hope about how the Bush administration was railroading the minority into accepting far right proposals – he was prepared to let his Northeastern and Pacific Western liberal allies do exactly the same thing: write bills that excite the left, infuriate the right, and scare the center; insist on speedy passage through the Congress; and use budget reconciliation to ram it through in case the expected super majority did not emerge.
This might have flown during FDR’s 100 Days. But this is not 1933 and Barack Obama is no Franklin Roosevelt.
You can say that again.
[Update early afternoon]
The race card gets trumped.
One of the last things I wrote on my blog before my current alleged-but-not-quite-really hiatus was that I think Obama, far from being our “first post-racial” president, may actually prove to be its last pre-post-racial president. And that if so it would be one of the greatest things he could accomplish for his country, albeit in spite of himself.
What Gorbachev was to Russian Communism, Obama could be to racialism in America. Change we can truly hope for.
There’s no better cure for racialism than putting a racialist in charge for a while, eh? You might be right, and I certainly hope so!
Quibbles – Obama’s 90 days ended a couple of months ago and it’s not like FDR didn’t have fierce opposition to his policies in Congress.
Which has what to do with race, Chris?
Sorry, Chris — I see what you were quibbling with now.
One of the problems that the Community-Organizer-in-Chief and His henchmen are finding out the hard way, is that St. Alinsky never got around to writing volume 2: “Rules for Victorious Radicals”. Ol’ Saul never actually won anything, and the big Socialist victories in the 1920s and 1930s just don’t provide good models. Maybe someone needs to write “Governing for Dummies” so this bunch will know what to do. (Bill Clinton seems to have lots of free time these days…)
it’s not like FDR didn’t have fierce opposition to his policies in Congress
Huh? If he did, it was his own party doing the opposing.
The other thing y’all tend to miss is that Obama thinks he’s a moderate.
Look at his history and past. He has no, repeat no, long-term influences in his life that come from anything resembling a conservative viewpoint — they are, one and all, either ideological Leftists or Mercedes Marxists. He has never in his life heard a sympathetic treatment of a conservative approach to anything.
Most especially, childhood is critical. We, most of us, have changed our minds about the things we learned from our parents, but it’s an intellectual thing. In the crunch, when emotions are involved, we tend to revert unless we’re particularly strong-minded. No one really fully overcomes their toilet training. Obama’s parents and strong childhood influences are all pure leftists.
So when he expresses any idea to the right of, say, Leon Trotsky, he truly believes it’s “moderate”.
Of course, he isn’t the only one. People in the higher-education ghetto are all pretty much in the same boat. One can be perfectly sincere and high-minded, and still be wrong.
Regards,
Ric
I think that, at some point in the Obamaphile lovefest, it has been forgotten that many people stayed home from the polls because Obama’s opponent wasn’t a whole lot better [and arguably worse]. Did Obama truly win “big” like Reagan, or did the competition suck that much worse? Resembling the “Reagan vs. Carter/Mondale” landslides, or the “Clinton vs. Dole” yawnfest?
Did Obama truly win “big” like Reagan, or did the competition suck that much worse?
No, Obama won by a squeaker, yet this hasn’t stopped the loony left from operating on the premise that they won a major landslide. Well, 60 seats in the Senate does help, but the sentiment isn’t as solid as they thought (perhaps they’re realizing it now).
Titus is right, and it seems to be the common theme when a Democrat wins. I remember even Bill Clinton’s 43% popular-vote plurality in 1992 was sold by his salivating supporters in the “news” media as “a mandate for change.”
Clinton, of course, had learned while governing Arkansas that political winds shift, and after 1994 he shifted with them as best he knew how.
Obama doesn’t have the background for it. I very much suspect if Republicans win back Congress next year it will be a much longer two years for Obama (to 2012) than for the rest of us.
Clinton, of course, had learned while governing Arkansas that political winds shift, and after 1994 he shifted with them as best he knew how.
Clinton was the master. Legend has it that even Newt Gingrich himself would never meet privately with Clinton — he always took an ally with him lest he be talked into some unfavorable deal.