Posted on 02/04/2008 10:22:23 PM PST by T.L.Sink
Team Obama has the ball - and the momentum. Obama has drawn praise from from the New York Post and from numerous conservative heavyweights, including former Reagan speechwriter Jeffrey Hart, National Review editor Rich Lowry, former education secretary and radio host Bill Bennett, and former Bush aide Peter Wehner. Obama's achievements are largely proleptic: words aren't deeds. And while he has few concrete achievements to his name, he does have a voting record that hardly suggests an ability to rise above Left and Right. After his first two years in the Senate, National Journal's analysis of roll call votes found that he was more liberal than 86 percent of his colleagues, and his voting record has grown more liberal since then. The liberal ADA now gives him a 97.5 rating, while National Journal ranks him the most liberal member of the Senate. In the recent Hollywood debate, he insisted, contrary to the evidence, that the problem with American education was that it was underfunded. But education funding has increased dramatically over the last 20 years to no good effect, as student performance on content-based tests continues to decline. In the same debate, Obama at first waffled in response to an African-American womsn's question about the effect of illegal immigration on working class wages. But finally, he insisted that complaining about the effects of illegal immigrants on working-class wages and neighborhoods was a form of "scapegoating."
(Excerpt) Read more at city-journal.org ...
Maybe, but I don’t know who Jeffrey Hart and Peter Wehner are, and I’m pretty sure Bennet and Lowry won’t be voting for Obama.
I wouldn't vote for my own mother if she had the qualifications and beliefs of Obama. But I expect to be accused by the left of being a racist for refusing to consider voting for him despite the fact my reasons have nothing to do with race. The race card will be played no matter what if Obama wins the the nomination.
Hell, I have praised Obama my self. But my praise for him has been exclusively in the arena of his oratory skills and ability to rhetorically stun audiences into forgetting that he isn’t actually saying anything.
Remember when there was a term called ‘political doublespeak’ or ‘talking loud and saying nothing’? Obama needs his own saying like ‘inspiring the masses to do nothing in particular’ or ‘saying so eloquently so much and conveying so little’.
Actually, Obama reminds me of Oprah. Think about this. Oprah is amazingly famous and has a Svengali-like following of women(mostly) who hang on her every word. Yet nobody you ask could actually tell you what it is that Oprah really believes in. What religion does she practice? What does she think happens to you when you die? Does Oprah believe that tax increases create or suppress economic activity? Hell, what brand of hair spray does Oprah like the most?
Oprah talks about virtually everything but she rarely if ever takes an actual position on anything which has two sides. If she talks to a guy who believes that upbringing causes your sexual orientation, she is fascinated and acts as though she agrees. Next week, she has someone on her show who proclaims that it is a scientific fact that sexual orientation is genetic and Oprah says ‘I’ve heard that from many people’. But after both shows, you really don’t know which one Oprah herself thinks is true.
When we are talking about fashion or what your dreams mean or feng shui, its easy to not have a firm opinion since there is no right/wrong answer. But what about partial birth abortion? The Estate Tax? Jessicas Law? Nobody knows. Her viewers, readers and sychophants certainly don’t. They have a general feel of what she thinks but not about virtually any real issue which is politically contested.
Obama votes like a McGovern/Feingold/Bernie Sanders socialist but he talks like a guy who is charging $25,000 an evening at corporate retreats as a motivational speaker. Obama has yet to do anything that any garden variety motivational speaker doesn’t do every day on the job. They inspire, they excite and they provide a host of catchy phrases like “If you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you are right” which sound deep and profound but are intellectual cotton candy.
It would be a fascinating experience to have a US President in office who has absolutely no affiliations to anybody in business, politics or any other organizations and no policy plans. There are somewhere around 100,000 Federal employees who would be taking direction from a guy who doesn’t know who or where they are and what they do.
I have a question :
If Obama is Pres can he unilaterally order our troops back from Iraq ? Does the Congess have a role?
If it's McCain v. Clinton it's a fight for the middle. Clinton must go down.
Good question. As commander in chief with a Democrat house behind him...why not?
That’s not a rally, that’s a counter-protest you see...
Good post.
While Obama’s oratory style is certainly skilled and impressive, the content of his words amount to verbal cotton candy.
Yes and no. I can’t think of anything Congress could do to force a president to fight a war that wouldn’t constitute a separation of powers violation. Of course given the current state of the supreme court and their disregard for separation of powers that might not matter.
Can someone name one thing Osama Obama has ever accomplished outside of being a black dem candidate ?
The power of the media to make something out of literally nothing is amazing. Herr Goebbels would be impressed by todays socialist media Obama propaganda campaign.
As a white guy there is no way that I am praising Obama. Look what happened when Joe Biden tried to compliment the guy. He was accused of being insensitive and politically incorrect. If Biden can’t parse his words to stay out of trouble, then I am sure I couldn’t either.
The guy supports partial birth abortion and voted against medical support for infants who survived abortion.
That’s all I need to know about his character.
He’s scum, no matter how well he speaks.
Not to mention a million and a half or so professional soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines scattered all over the world. Fascinating perhaps, but not pretty.
You're a good writer. I've read op eds by really famous people lately that didn't make anywhere near that much sense.
A president barak HUSSEIN obama would truly be frightening. Under the real possibility of a nuclear threat, which button would he push - YES NO PRESENT? - How many live aborted children would be denied life support? When would American companies be nationalized? Very unsettling!
Nearly anything to derail the Klintons.
“If Obama is Pres can he unilaterally order our troops back from Iraq ? Does the Congess have a role?”
Regardless of whether he could or could not, it would certainly be within his powers as CIC to confine US troops to base suspending all combat operations and essentially reaching the same end.
“Oprah talks about virtually everything but she rarely if ever takes an actual position on anything which has two sides. If she talks to a guy who believes that upbringing causes your sexual orientation, she is fascinated and acts as though she agrees. Next week, she has someone on her show who proclaims that it is a scientific fact that sexual orientation is genetic and Oprah says ‘I’ve heard that from many people’....”
Analogy: Reminds me of a scene in an episode of “Frasier” I happened to see the other night as I passed through the Den and my wife was watching television. His brother Nigel’s “Date” was “fascinated”, and so “Interested” by everything about him, and “Frasier” took Nigel into the kitchen and was explaining the “Singles Match Service” in which Nigel had met his “Date” was actually an “Escort Service”. It was quite humorous, but the point is the parallel to Oprah’s “fascination and Interest” without any commitment to “Position”, nor substance. She seems quite “Generic”.
One size fits all sort of a thing.
There is no doubt she has become quite wealthy with this sort of vapid format.
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