John Hawkins: Obama's Top Ten Flaws That Will Cost Him in November

Townhall ^ | August 1, 2008 | John Hawkins

[2ndDivisionVet]

In an election cycle where Republicans are reviled and the GOP candidate, John McCain, seems to inspire less excitement than a Droopy marathon on the Cartoon Network, it's hard for some people to understand how the race is still close. After all, Barack Obama is drawing record crowds and generating the sort of wild-eyed loyalty from the press that hasn't been seen since Guyana, right before they broke out the Kool-Aid -- and yet, on paper, this race is a coin flip.

Why is that? Because this race is turning into a referendum on Barack Obama and quite frankly, he has absolutely nothing going for him besides the fact that he's young, good looking, black, and does a great job of reading the speeches his handlers have prepared for him. Once you get beyond those paper-thin qualifications for office, Obama is nothing but a mass of flaws, bad character traits, and left-wing agitprop. While the press lauds Obama as if he just cured cancer and invented a car that runs on lawn clippings in the same day, everyone else can't help but notice...

The Snobbery: If little girls are made up of sugar, spice, and everything nice, then Obama is made up of arugula, personal presidential seals, and hubris. Never before has a candidate with so few accomplishments to his name looked so far down his nose at the American people.

The Phony Idealism: Silently, there must be a lot of liberal Democrats kicking themselves today because all during the primaries, the race was portrayed as a battle between Barack Obama, the idealist and Hillary Clinton, the pragmatic, say-anything-to-win candidate. Then, the moment Obama captured the nomination, all of those precious ideals flew out the window and Obama started shifting his positions farther and faster than Hillary Clinton ever did. So much for the candidate who was supposed to be a "new kind of politician."

The Anti-White Racism: Obama spent 20 years going to a virulently anti-white, anti-American church while he used Jeremiah Wright -- who's the moral equivalent of David Duke -- as a spiritual mentor and a sounding board. This is not a man who looks kindly upon what he refers to as "typical white people."

The Lack of Patriotism: Rather famously, Obama refused to hold his hand over his heart for the national anthem and publicly made a point of not wearing a flag pin -- and then had the "audacity" to complain when people quite naturally questioned his patriotism. Since then, Obama replaced the American flag on his plane with his own symbol and made a point of running down his country and calling himself a "citizen of the world" while he was overseas. Is having a President who loves his own country too much to ask? In Obama's case, apparently so.

His Liberalism: Although Obama has attempted to shift to the center since he captured the Democratic nomination, his record is one of radical liberalism. In fact, he was ranked as the single most liberal senator in 2007 by National Journal, actually supported a complete ban on handgun sales, and wants to hand out 845 billion dollars to foreign nations as part of an effort to "elimin(ate) extreme poverty." If you would be thrilled to have a President who is as liberal as Michael Moore or Keith Olbermann, then Barack Obama is your man.

His Changing Position On The War in Iraq: In one of the most ironic twists of the campaign, Obama beat Hillary Clinton by being so stridently anti-war in Iraq, but his latest ever-shifting position essentially mirrors that of John McCain. Although Obama is still promising a timeline, he is saying he could leave 50,000 troops in Iraq and that the withdrawal is "entirely conditions-based." Although the lefties are biting their tongues, you know they must be seething that they've been sold down the river on their biggest issue -- or maybe they just assume he's lying, which is entirely possible.

His Inexperience: Obama has never served in the military, the House, or as a governor, was first elected to the Senate in 2004, and his battle with Hillary was the only tough campaign he has ever been in. In other words, if he's elected, he would be one of the least worthy candidates ever to make it to the White House. If we had another 9/11 on his watch or even if one of those infamous 3 AM emergency calls that Hillary campaigned on were to come in, would you rather have Obama or McCain handling it? For that matter, would you rather have Obama or a random person picked out of the phone book handling it? Neither Obama nor the random person from the phone book would have much relevant experience, but at least the random person would probably be humble enough to realize it and ask for help, unlike Obama.

The Poor Judgment: This is a guy who stayed in a racist church and stuck by a bigoted reverend for 20 years, grotesquely leaked his Western Wall prayer to the press, and blew off a visit to see wounded troops while the whole world was watching him overseas. In other words, even when it comes to matters of mere politics, this is not a man who can be trusted to make wise decisions. So, how can we trust him to make good policy decisions for the country?

He's Gaffe Prone: When John McCain makes mistakes, the media tries to portray him as senile. But Obama makes dumber mistakes than George Bush, more mistakes than Dan Quayle, and that's despite the fact that he spends far less time talking to the press than McCain. So, what's his excuse for thinking that we have more than 57 states, claiming America's "fallen heroes" were in the audience listening to him, and his claim that "'10,000 people died' in the Kansas tornadoes when the death toll was really only 12?" Dan Quayle’s notorious potato(e) error, which was used to forever portray him as a drooling moron, wouldn’t even qualify as one of Obama’s top five mistakes.

His Fuzzy Platform: Obama's positions on guns, the war in Iraq, taxes, FISA, and public financing, among other issues, have shifted faster than a cheetah chasing a greyhound through an obstacle course. Since he doesn't have much of a record to go on, seems to have very poor judgment, and he doesn't have a solid platform to stand on, how are people supposed to know what he will do when he gets in the White House?

[2ndDivisionVet]

This young columnist has a good future ahead of him, IMO.

[Ingtar]

Not a bad article, but he may have one thing wrong. I believe it will cost him the nomination, not the election.

[YdontUleaveLibs]

I wish it were that simple. These flaws seem apparent even to me and I haven’t followed Obama news much, avoid it as a matter of fact, I find the man odious. The fact is most people don’t look past the superficial and many young people and senile demonrats will vote for NObama just because he is a Demonrat and a good looking(not to me)black man.

[Reagan Man]

John Hawkins is a great political observer and a solid conservative. He is also the Founder of RightWingNews.com. He took apart Rudy Giuliani back in 2006. This essay on Obama is concise and exposes Obama wide open.

... this race is turning into a referendum on Barack Obama and quite frankly, he has absolutely nothing going for him besides the fact that he's young, good looking, black, and does a great job of reading the speeches his handlers have prepared for him. Once you get beyond those paper-thin qualifications for office, Obama is nothing but a mass of flaws, bad character traits, and left-wing agitprop.

OUCH!

[mylife]

Never before has a candidate with so few accomplishments to his name looked so far down his nose at the American people.

This is exactly what is killing him with the blue collar class in Ohio. He puts on an act of "whoaa is me" while dissing people who had more difficult lives

[mylife]

Let us Pray that Obama continues his “Me, Me, Me Act”

[oyez]

I would be a disservice to blacks to elect Obama and Obama turn to out be the worst president in history.

[mylife]

If we had another 9/11 on his watch or even if one of those infamous 3 AM emergency calls that Hillary campaigned on were to come in, would you rather have Obama or McCain handling it? For that matter, would you rather have Obama or a random person picked out of the phone book handling it? Neither Obama nor the random person from the phone book would have much relevant experience, but at least the random person would probably be humble enough to realize it and ask for help, unlike Obama.

Sums things up well

[ETL]

Barack Obama is drawing record crowds and generating the sort of wild-eyed loyalty from the press that hasn't been seen since Guyana, right before they broke out the Kool-Aid

There's more to this comparison than most people know, including Sean Hannity who uses the "Kool-Aid Drinkers" line often on his programs...

"In 1951, Jones began attending communist meetings and rallies in Indianapolis.[4] Jones became flustered at harassment he received during the McCarthy Hearings,[4] particularly, regarding meetings between Jones and his mother with Paul Robeson.[5] This, among other things, provoked a seminal moment for Jones where he asked himself "how can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."[5][4]"

"In the summer of 1977, Jones and most of the 900 members of the People's Temple moved to Guyana from San Francisco after media pressure built.[25] Jones left the same night that an editor at New West magazine read Jones an article by Marshall Kilduff to be published detailing allegations by former Temple members.[25][16] Jones named the settlement Jonestown after himself.

Jones purported to establish Jonestown as a benevolent model communist community stating, 'I believe we’re the purest communists there are.' [26] Jones' wife, Marceline, described Jonestown as "dedicated to live for socialism, total economic and racial and social equality. We are here living communally."[26] Jones wanted to construct a model community to show others and stated that Prime Minister of Guyana Forbes Burnham 'couldn’t rave enough about us, uh, the wonderful things we do, the project, the model of socialism.'[27] In that regard, like the restrictive emigration policies of the then Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea and other communist republics, Jones did not permit members to leave Jonestown.[28]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jones

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Snobbery or acting like he is already the President will be his downfall. That is the line of attack that needs to be repeated because it will stick and it is so much a part of Obama’s personality that he won't be able to change and pretend to be on every side of the issue like he does on most things.

[ETL]

Barack Obama, July 30, 2008, Washington Post:

"This is the moment that the world is waiting for,"... "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/29/AR2008072902068.html?nav=hcmodule

[mylife]

I cant get any to see that

[Maelstorm]

Thanks for the post. John provides very good analysis. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Obama even to the bystander leaves one wondering if he’d be qualified to be catering some of the events he is at let alone be President.

[mylife]

You notice that this jerk becomes more emboldened by the day?

You are right. Dislike of arrogance cuts across party lines

[Nathan Zachary]

"Not a bad article, but he may have one thing wrong. I believe it will cost him the nomination, not the election."

Do you think Obama would still run for president as an independent if he somehow lost the nomination? He probably has enough money to, if that's legal.

I don't think anyone has considered this possibility, however remote it may be.

[mylife]

What a pompous tit

[ETL]

The Center for Public Intellectuals & The University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC)
April 19th-20th, 2002, Conference
[Participants include: William/Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Sen Barack Obama]

April 19th-20th, 2002
Chicago Illini Union
828 S. Wolcott

This conference is part of the Center's mission of helping to create a more engaged civil society, working towards social change, fostering coalitions between theorists and activists, and combating anti-intellectualism in contemporary culture. It will be both a celebration of ideas and a rigorous examination of the roles and responsibilities that intellectuals play in society.

I. Why Do Ideas Matter? (a keynote panel)

We introduce the “meta” theme of the conference by hearing “success stories” from diverse voices discussing their experiences intervening intellectually.

Timuel Black, Chicago activist; Prof. Emeritus, City Colleges of Chicago
Lonnie Bunch, President, Chicago Historical Society
Bernardine Dohrn, Northwestern University Law School, Children and Family Justice Center
Gerald Graff, UIC, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Richard Rorty, Stanford University, Philosophy

III. Lunch and Public Encounters

Alternative breakout tours led by Chicago activists. Tours of Bronzeville and other communities, and visits to organizations that are working on partnering theorists with activists.

IV. Intellectuals in Times of Crisis
Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations.

William Ayers, UIC, College of Education; author of Fugitive Days
Douglass Cassel, Northwestern University, Center for International Human Rights
Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago, Political Science
Salim Muwakkil, Chicago Tribune; In These Times
Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator
Barbara Ransby, UIC, African-American Studies (moderator)

The Center for Public Intellectuals
University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC):
http://www.uic.edu/classes/las/las400/conferencealt.htm

"In July 1969, [Bernardine] Dohrn, Eleanor Raskin, Dianne Donghi, Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton, all representing 'Weatherman', as Dohrn's faction was now called, traveled to Cuba and met with representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn

From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
"FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808

Weather Underground Organization linked to North Vietnamese and Cuban governments, KGB
Source: FBI, via Freedom of Information Act [420 pages in all on pdf] :
"the example of the Cuban revolution became the guide for the emerging American student revolutionary. With an increasing number of trips to Havana where the youthful revolutionary could learn at first hand how to create revolution, the influence of Cuba on the developing WUO [Weather Underground Organization] was enormous."
http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/weather.htm

From Sept 11, 2001, New York Times article/interview with Obama associate and friend, William/Bill Ayers.
Article title: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"

"Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as:
'Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

New York Times, September 11, 2001: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Allies in War
By David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001:

ON THE MORNING OF THE ATTACKS on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, along with a million other readers of the New York Times including many who would never be able to read the paper again, I opened its pages to be confronted by a color photo showing a middle-aged couple holding hands and affecting a defiant look at the camera. The article was headlined in an irony that could not have been more poignant, "No Regrets For A Love Of Explosives."

The couple pictured were Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, former leaders of the 1960s’ Weather Underground, America’s first terrorist cult. One of their bombing targets, as it happened, was the Pentagon.

"I don’t regret setting bombs," Ayers was quoted in the opening line of the Times profile; "I feel we didn’t do enough."

In 1969, Ayers and his wife convened a "War Council" in Flint Michigan, whose purpose was to launch a military front inside the United States with the purpose of helping Third World revolutionaries conquer and destroy it.

Taking charge of the podium, dressed in high-heeled boots and a leather mini-skirt – her signature uniform – Dorhn incited the assembled radicals to join the war against "Amerikkka" and create chaos and destruction in the "belly of the beast."

Her voice rising to a fevered pitch, Dohrn raised three fingers in a "fork salute" to mass murderer Charles Manson whom she proposed as a symbol to her troops. Referring to the helpless victims of the Manson Family as the "Tate Eight" (the most famous was actress Sharon Tate) Dohrn shouted:

"Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"

(big snip)

Today William Ayers is not merely an author favored by the New York Times, but a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

His Lady Macbeth [Bernardine Dohrn] is not merely a lawyer, but a member of the American Bar Association’s governing elite, as well as the director of Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center.
[it's true! see: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/aclu/]

Article: Allies in War -by David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09

"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==

From WorldNetDaily:
Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. Obama served on the board with [Bill] Ayers, who was a Weathermen leader and has written about his involvement with the group's bombings of the New York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.
Article: Obama worked with terrorist
Senator helped fund organization that rejects 'racist' Israel's existence:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=57231

Bill Ayers TODAY (April 6, 2008), from his own red communist star-headed website, begging to debate communism vs capitalism with Sean Hannity and STILL calling for revolution!

"Imperialism. I’m against it, and if Sean Hannity and others were honest, this is the ground they would fight me on. Capitalism played its role historically and is exhausted as a force for progress: built on exploitation, theft, conquest, war, and racism, capitalism and imperialism must be defeated and a world revolution—a revolution against war and racism and materialism, a revolution based on human solidarity and love, cooperation and the common good —must win.

We begin by releasing our most hopeful dreams and our most radical imaginations: a better world is both possible and necessary.

Source: http://billayers.wordpress.com/2008/04/page/2/

'Guilty as hell, free as a bird—America is a great country,' he [Ayers] said."
August 2001, Chicago Magazine (article: No Regrets)
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2001/No-Regrets/

[Darkwolf377]

"John McCain, seems to inspire less excitement than a Droopy marathon on the Cartoon Network, it's hard for some people to understand how the race is still close. After all, Barack Obama is drawing record..."

I wish this guy wouldn't just reflexively buy all the cliches floating out there--it's lazy.

McCain was never my idea of exciting, but I've read many, many pieces about how on campuses and elsewhere McCain is treated like a celebrity--which he is, of course. Almost all nominees are treated this way, and McCain's crowd responses were reported as this right up until the press fell for Obama.

Similarly, every time I see that Barack is drawing record crowds, within a day, it seems, there's a report that in the same location, John Kerry or whoever drew the same numbers last time around.

It makes me ignore the rest of the piece, even if (especially if) whatever he writes is basically cheerleading for our side.

[mylife]

Symbolize this Barama...

[Nathan Zachary]

"Never before has a candidate with so few accomplishments to his name looked so far down his nose at the American people.'

Don't even think of VP, whitey!