Posted on 12/06/2010 11:40:31 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Dan Rather warned today on MSNBC that a deal to extend all of the current tax hikes would create a demand for a primary challenge to Barack Obama from the Left in 2012. Big progressive contributors to the Democratic Party have already concluded that Obama won’t fight for his principles, Rather told the “Lean Forward” network, and that the Bush-era tax rates would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. Actually, Rather offers a more complicated down-homish colorful metaphor, but essentially says that the Left is so shocked, shocked! that this lifetime backbencher provides no leadership that they will actively recruit someone with those qualities for the 2012 cycle (via Eyeblast):
(VIDEO AT LINK)
Rather’s hardly the first to notice this, of course. Frank Rich argued this weekend that Obama was a victim of Stockholm Syndrome as an explanation for Obama’s lack of leadership, which has more than enough silliness in it for rebuttal, including the claim that the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 were the single greatest contributor to the deficits, even though tax revenues went up afterward and that government didn’t own the money in the first place. But Rich’s silliness inspired much more poetic and incoherent flights of fancy from Clarence Jones at the Huffington Post yesterday. Jones, an MLK Scholar at Stanford, paints Obama as the new LBJ and wonders aloud who will be this generation’s Eugene McCarthy:
It is not easy to consider challenging the first African-American to be elected as President of the United States. But, regrettably, I believe that the time has come to do this. …
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist nor have a PhD in political science and sociology to see clearly that Obama has abandoned much of the base that elected him. He has done this because he no longer respects, fears or believes those persons who elected him have any alternative, but to accept what he does, whether they like it or not.
It is time for those persons who constituted the “Movement” that enabled Senator Barack Obama to be elected to “break their silence”; to indicate that they no longer will sit on their hands, and only let off verbal steam and ineffective sound and fury, and “hope” for the best. …
The pursuit of the war in Afghanistan in support of a certifiably corrupt Afghan government and the apparent willingness to retreat from his campaign commitment of no further tax cuts for the rich, his equivocal and foot dragging leadership to end DADT, his TARP for Wall Street, but, equivocal insufficient attention to the unemployment and housing foreclosures of Main Street, suggest that the template of the 1968 challenge to the reelection of President Lyndon Johnson now must be thoughtfully considered for Obama in 2012.
Jones’ column has to be read in full to really be appreciated. He manages to reference HUD, McCarthy, and Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In the Wind” (lyrics from which he quotes in its entirety) in order to make his point, which is apparently that it’s 1968 all over again. He wants the old New Left to rise again to push another President out of office, but unfortunately for Jones, the old New Left is what put Obama in office in the first place — and it was the unpopularity of the old New Left agenda that has crippled his presidency. He was their best hope to make the case for the hard-Left agenda; there is no substitute, no one to put a handsome face and a bright smile on government control of production and distribution.
Didn’t Dan use his 15 minutes a few years ago?
The problem is that you sully this forum with “Dan Rather”!
Dan Rather on msnbc (again)....LOL.
Hire him!
Oh, and please let a Communist challenge the Marxist.
I’ll buy the peanuts and popcorn if you provide the beer!
How about shame all around for the entire democrat cabal?
That would be one Rather huge party.
Dan who?
You mean to say that they let that Blathering Rather idiot back on TV?
I should not be surprised at anything that happens now in the USSA.
And why is that a bad thing?
He doesn't know the frequency.
I am looking forward to the day his approval bottoms out at exactly 13%
The Sharpton/Grayson ticket in 2012. Perfect for the Moonbat Party.
FreeperDoll.... What a sweet FReepername!
Obama will face a primary challenge if two plus two equals four.
If he caves on taxes (face-saving compromise or whatever), the economy will improve, he will beat his challenger, and will go on to give the Democrat concession speech of 2012.
Otherwise, his primary challenger will give same.
I read on DU that they are suggesting:
Spitzer - Dean - Franken - Grayson - Huffington - Pelosi
The Dem primaries would be very interesting.
Dan Rather=Peggy Noonan’s old boss (before she slithered into the Reagan administration and associated herslef with the Gipper)
This same stuff was said when Clinton signed on to a balanced budget and welfare reform. Yet in 1996, those who criticized him lined up to vote for him again.
Obama’s voters aren’t going anywhere and he won’t face a primary challenge.
You’re analogy is off. Clinton turned the radical left against him in that election. Remember him running around promising to fix those laws if he was reelected? Also there was a major thing that happened that election. Ross Perot. He siphoned off 9% of the vote and some of them were Dims. Also we had a terrible candidate in Bob Dole who fumbled the ball all through the campaign and was too old at that time.
Obummers reelection is shaping up to compare more like Johnson ‘68. Passed massive Gov’t programs nobody wanted and had a war that wasn’t going well. The left is starting to sound exactly like they did then with the open sniping and calls for a challenger.
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