Posted on 01/04/2013 7:19:13 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The president may be a big-spending liberal, but his willingness to give ground on taxes should prove that he’s not out to ruin the country.
The fiscal-cliff deal settled nothing in terms of the desperate, ongoing struggle to bring Washington’s devastating deficits under control, but it should put an end, once and for all, to a bitter debate that’s damaged the conservative movement for the last four years.
With the president participating in successful last-minute efforts to prevent crushing, automatic, across-the-board tax hikes that would have done disastrous damage to the U.S. economy, it’s time for Barack Obama’s angriest critics to finally give up the paranoid fantasy that he’s some sort of alien agent with a secret agenda to wreck capitalism and weaken the United States.
If the president really did nurse a deep-seated desire to ruin the free enterprise system (and the Republican Party along with it), he just missed his golden opportunity.
Had he pushed the nation off the fiscal cliff (as many conservatives feared he would), he could have gained a precious two-fer—savaging the American business community with nightmarish new tax burdens, crushing 30 million new households with the impact of the Alternate Minimum Tax, and blaming stubborn, unyielding Republicans for all the resulting wreckage.
Obama’s willingness to make a deal doesn’t mean that his policies count as wise or far-sighted or beneficial. But his readiness to compromise should prove to anyone but the most deluded nut-case that those policies are not deliberately destructive.
Had the president stood firm on his endlessly re-affirmed determination to raise rates for all households earning more than $250,000, then John Boehner and the rest of the GOP would have refused any deal, taxes would have gone up automatically on every household and business, and the nation would have fallen into severe double-dip recession. Instead of forcing that outcome, the president agreed to exempt the big majority (70 percent) of those well-off families he originally had targeted, freezing tax rates for households majority with reported income between $250,000 and $450,000. Even taxpayers above the $450,000 line will pay far less than they would have paid if the tax system had gone off the cliff—because of big savings on all income earned below that line.
This deliverance from destruction should put to rest—forever—the toxic notion of the populist right that the president of the United States harbors the secret goal of destroying the country he’s been (twice) elected to lead. That idea often connects with idiotic claims about President Obama’s concealed Kenyan birth, hidden Muslim affiliation, radical Communist commitments, descent from Malcolm X or Frank Marshall Davis, control by demonic puppet-masters like George Soros, and so forth and so on ad infinitum (or insane-item).
At its most sophisticated level, the theory of Obama’s destroy-America agenda links to his father’s undeniable anti-colonialist and Third World socialist outlook. In bestselling books like The Roots of Obama’s Rage and his smash hit movie 2016: OBAMA’S AMERICA, my friend Dinesh D’Souza advanced the idea that the president consciously desired to reduce the nation’s prosperity and power in order to make up for the sins of racist colonialism and to foster a more balanced, multi-polar world order. No less a figure than Newt Gingrich, often hailed as the most influential intellectual in the Republican Party, embraced D’Souza’s analysis as “brilliant” and suggested that it accurately assessed the true motivation of the most powerful political figure on the planet.
In the world of conservative media, Rush Limbaugh has promoted similar arguments since Obama’s earliest days in office, insisting that his famous hope for the president to “fail” meant only failure for the new chief executive’s malevolent nation-wrecking aims. On countless occasions, this most influential (and generally insightful) voice in right-of-center commentary has explained the economic setbacks of Obama’s first term by insisting that the president meant to damage capitalism “on purpose.” On one memorable occasion Limbaugh suggested that if a hound gets whacked by his master once or twice he might write it off as unintentional, but if the abusive owner punishes the pet every single day then even a dumb dog knows it’s no accident.
The fiscal-cliff crisis may have accomplished almost nothing in settling our most serious policy disputes but it should put to rest the illogical notion that the presiding chief executive somehow advances his own interests through economic devastation. For 99.4 percent of all U.S. households, the president ended up agreeing to permanent consecration of the same Bush tax cuts he formerly blamed for all the economic reverses of the last decade. He accepted only a third of the new revenue he had demanded as absolutely essential to deficit reduction as recently as a month ago. In the aftermath of the agreement, Democrats seem not only surprised at the scope of the president’s concessions to the GOP, but utterly amazed that most Republicans appear unable to assess the significance of their own gains in the negotiations.
In part, that blindness stems from the lingering fear that any perceived success for Obama involves inevitable harm to America’s prospects for prosperity, because the president yearns to crash the economy as step one of imposing a new socialist system. Abandoning this delusion will not only allow the GOP to improve its political prospects but will foster a more realistic and constructive role in governance.
Barack Obama remains a standard- issue big-government leftist with dysfunctional assumptions about Washington’s limitless power to solve every problem. Huge fights remain as principled Republicans seek to curb his free-spending excesses and the Democratic Party’s unstoppable instinct to expand federal power.
But those fights will go better when conservatives acknowledge that the president qualifies as a typical, vote-buying Democratic politico in the tradition of FDR, LBJ, Teddy Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Dick Daley, seeking power, popularity, and prosperity by spending other people’s money. It’s never helped the cause of limited government or fiscal sanity or effective leadership in Washington for the right to flirt with the inane, offensive idea that Barack Obama is a kamikaze—or commie-kaze—bent on a political suicide mission to steer the most powerful nation on earth toward fiery destruction. With the economy-saving fiscal-cliff compromise now a done deal, that dark vision looks more ridiculous than ever.
I’ve never been a fan of Medved’s but just lately everything I’ve heard from him has been astoundingly naive and stupid!
An ex-Dem campaigner, Ivy League elitist, staunch statist.
His radio format is to have anyone who disagrees call in and “debate” him. Yawn.
Our only conservative talk radio station has this self-righteous RINO clown on for three dreadful hours at noon - fortunately an old defunct talk radio station has just come back to life, so I now have a choice driving around during my lunch hour.
A caller was debating him about gun policy once and simply cornered the fellow. Medvid, an in-your-face-about-it Jew, repeatedly, and increasingly feebly, reiterated that there existed no scenario possible that would cause him ever to consider taking up arms against the government. ‘Nough said.
Exactly. Is this idiot completely oblivious to the fact that the marxists have slowly, patiently, but inexorably infiltrated every American institution, most recently the Christian church? Is he really unaware of the Alinsky strategy of three steps forward, one step back, or as Margaret Thatcher called it, “the ratchet effect”? They-the marxists-are perfectly aware that they don’t need a Russian-style revolution to implement their agenda.Time, and the indoctrination of each succeeding generation, is on their side, at least until the end of history.
I hate to break it to those deniers who believe that President Obama's tax-guzzling capacity has somehow been diminished by the fiscal cliff provision to fix "permanent" tax rates. You're dreaming.
Several smart columnists and respected conservative editorial pieces tell us that a major silver lining in the crisis deal just concluded is that by agreeing not to reinstitute the Clinton tax rates (and leave the Bush rates in place) for all but the "wealthy" (income of $400,000 for single filers and $450,000 for marrieds), Obama and the Democrats made a major concession. They argue that if Democrats couldn't do better after Obama was just re-elected and when the debt is so high, they'll never be able to. They'll have to realize that they will never be able to sustain their desired welfare state through raising taxes alone and have to come to the table on serious spending cuts and entitlement reform.
This assumes that Obama and the Democrats have any real interest in reducing spending or curbing entitlements. They have shown no interest in doing so, despite the crushing debt problem threatening the nation's solvency.
I thought he was supposed to be up on all these things?
First,obamaomau is NOT a standard big govt. leftist— he is a committed agenda Cloward Piven, Alinksyite, marxists destroyer of all elements of our govt that do not suit the agenda- preserving only those tools that will do it (ex: Justice dept, immigration)
Second, obamaomau is not done with raising taxes. And continuing to protect the asset wealthy (GE,Capt. Morgan Rum, and Hollywood, GoldmanSachsCitiMorganStanley) while punishing what remains of the EARNING wealthy— forcing redistribution to the govt.
Medved is a creature/slave of Hollywood, and for them he is a “conservative”. But he has no clue about real America.
None. Many many people are being hurt severely by this, and it is for the “ruling class” cooperative RINO,DINO, socialist marxist, corporatists.
Lost in high weeds, this guy!
As you probably know MedVed is a big Sasquatch believer. For real. He’s totally into it. A complete moron. No moron stone left unturned!
< PLONK >
The Empire (GOPe) strikes back.
When are conservatives going to wake up to the fact that the GOPe is part of the team enabling the destruction of the solvency of the USA?
Without reading comments, I’d like to just say, if you’ve never heard Mr. Medved’s anger and hostility spewing over the waves against people who question the legitimacy of the birth certificate, then you don’t know this man.
Hannnity has no gig. everything’s different now. No one who listens to this has any tolerance for appeasement and schmoozing. It’s not a choice, it is a feeling based on facts of the nature of our gov’r.
Yep, you're more likely to overcome resistance by incrementalism, like the frog in the boiling pot analogy.
There's also a joke that illustrates it. Two bulls are sitting on a hill, looking down on a pasture full of cows. The younger bull says: "Hey, let's run down there and screw one of those cows!", but the older bull says "No, son, let's walk down there, and screw 'em all."
Yet, increasing confiscatory taxes on the rich which is an assault on savings and capital accumulation, outrageous deficit spending, inflation, refusal to allow wage rates to fall enough to significantly reduce the unemployment rate, refusal to put an end to illegal immigration,and the government control over the health industry are in fact destroying the country.
I know it’s not who he is but the way he says things. I had to quit listening to him because of that insipid smirky laugh he had like “heh heh heh heh” ad infinitum, ad nauseam.
“Understand yourself and understand your opponent, and in one hundred battles, you will never be defeated.
How many of you have been to a re-education camp? How many have had your property redistributed? How many of you are working at the collective?
Obama is a thief, a pickpocket, a con man. He has socialists around him, but he’s no Marxist. How about Pelosi and Reid and Biden? Are they all Marxists? The Democrats throw the socialist baloney out there to scare and distract the Republicans.
Our problem is con men, not Marxists.
michael Goebbells medved can go obama himself.
LLS
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