Posted on 01/30/2010 8:20:31 AM PST by reaganaut1
President Obama’s greatest need is to escape the ideological grip of congressional Democrats and the liberal base of the Democratic party (they’re one and the same). But he either doesn’t recognize this or, as a conventional liberal himself, isn’t so inclined. This self-inflicted difficulty has put Obama in worse political straits than President Clinton faced after the Republican landslide of 1994.
Certainly there was nothing in Obama’s State of the Union address last week to indicate he understands the fix he’s in or has devised a credible way to get out of it. His message, though he didn’t put it in quite these words, was that he’d rather fight for unpopular liberal policies than switch to broadly appealing centrist ones.
A bad omen for Obama and Democrats was the pleased-as-punch response of Capitol Hill’s top Republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “It makes my job a little easier than if he were moving to the middle and picking up people,” McConnell says. “I naïvely thought he was going to do a course correction.”
McConnell characterizes the Obama strategy as: “Ignore the public, we know what’s best, full speed ahead.” The practical effect is to yield the political high ground to Republicans. “He can call us the party of no till he’s blue in the face,” McConnell says. “It depends on what you’re saying no to.”
When the president had lunch with television anchors at the White House the day of the speech, he minimized his political distress. Were the rate of unemployment two points lower, he’d be in fine shape, Obama suggested. That’s probably true. And if pigs had wings they could fly.
Since the Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts [...] and the collapse of Obama’s domestic agenda, the parallels between Obama now and Clinton in 1994 have [become clear.]
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Fred, you don't seriously think he's in THEIR grip, do you?
In other words, the first black president is not like the first black president.
Until this post i had forgotten Obama is a black man
Reminding people of Clinton’s “success” in passing NAFTA, a Republican agenda item, isn’t a good thing. Much of the trouble with the American economy tracks back to that.
BTW-according to the article in Weekly Standard (above), it would seem uhbama certainly thinks the press corp anchors are a great big bunch of air headed stupidty.
Wow did he ever insult their intelligence (of course, maybe he is right-maybe they are all dunderheads....but to say there would be no problem if unemployment was just two points lower is ASTOUNDING! I wonder if ANY of the anchors had the cajones to LAUGH HEARTILY at that one?)
I don’t think the anchors go there (Obama) to hear the truth. They already know what the truth is. They go there to see the next daring move on the high wire, the next magic trick, the next dazzling misdirection. Just as with Clinton, they will start to tell us what an unerring sense of politics he has. For them it’s all about the political theater. We don’t matter . . . that’s been patently obvious for some time.
Obama is Clinton II
Obama — History as a coke user
Clinton — History as a coke user
Obama — Running all over the world apologizing for America
Clinton — Running all over the world apologizing for slavery
Obama — Obamacare
Clinton — Hillary care
Obama —in Bed with Ayers
Clinton —leads anti American protest in England Hillary in Bed with Black Panthers
Obama — Fake photo ops with returning military caskets
Clinton — Fake building of a cross on DDay Beach and Fake finding a flag at WWII cemetery in
Europe
Obama — New gun control from Holder
Clinton — Brady Bill and Assault Weapons Ban
Obama — Taking 3 months to decide on new troops
Clinton — Denying Armor in Samolia
Obama — Enemies List
Clinton — Filegate
Obama disses SCOTUS in SOTU speech
Clinton—SCOTUS boycotts SOTU and disbars Clinton
Obama — Playing Golf while waiting to decide on troops in Afganistan
Clinton — Playing golf and not taking the phone call to take out Bin Laden
USS Cole—Kabul Towers—Attempted asassination of Fomer pres Bush
Responds with Tomahawk missles at radrar sites an aspirin factory
Obama — Blaming Fox News Rush Limbaugh Glenn Beck
Clinton — Blaming Talk Radio for Oke City and blaming Fox News and Wash Times
Obama — No Middle Class Taxes —Gonna get a tax increase
Clinton Promised Middle Class Tax Cut instead new Tax Bill
Obama — Promised Most Transparent administration in history — Least transparent
Clinton — Promised most ethical administration in history —most corrupt
Obama — Everybody’s fault but his
Clinton — Everybody’s fault but his
Clinton — IRS auditing of all major Conservative Organizations
Obama — April ain’t here yet
Clinton —WACO
—Secrets to the Chicoms
—Lincoln Bedroom rent out
—Pay for trade plane ride
Whitewater
—Monicagate
—Gays in the Military
—Abortion
—Wrong War in the Balkans
— Groundwork for 911(Berger steals proof )
—Pardons Puerto Rican Terrorists
—Pardons Marc Rich
—Rapegate
—Gropegate
— Loots the WH
—Loathes the military
Obama — Gay Czars
—Abortion
-—Moves detainees from Gitmo
—Civilian trial for 911
—Gays in the military
Obama — Ruins economy with spending
Clinton— Lays groundwork for Mortgage Melt Down —Raises taxes ( but gets bailed out with
Greenspan fed rate cuts )
Clinton—Campaigns for losing candidates
Obama —Campaigns for losing candidates
Clinton—We are not getting our message out
Obama —We are not getting our message out
Clinton — 1994 GOP takes Congress
Obama — Starts 1 yr early with 3 big losses his FIRST year
Actually NAFTA is necessarily a bad thing, but when Mexico and other so-called partners aren’t willing to reciprocally lower their tariffs on US products it makes NAFTA bad policy.
President BUSH's greatest need is to escape the ideological grip of congressional REPUBLICANS and the CONSERVATIVE base of the REPUBLICAN party (they’re one and the same). But he either doesn’t recognize this or, as a conventional CONSERVATIVE himself, isn’t so inclined. This self-inflicted difficulty has put BUSH in worse political straits than HIS FATHER, President GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH faced after RENEGING ON HIS *NO NEW TAXES* PROMISE.
Voila! Easy peasy, fill-in-the-blanks opinion writing. I wonder if iPhone has an app for that?
YOu seriously think that spew you posted will affect anyone?
Barack Obama: “I’m no ideologue. Ignore that volume of Marx and Engels on my bookshelf. It’s next to Maos’s “Little Red Book,” and Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals.”
". . . response of Capitol Hill’s top Republican, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. “It makes my job a little easier than if he were moving to the middle and picking up people,” McConnell says. “I naïvely thought he was going to do a course correction.”
These two paragraphs are revealing, and Republicans who are truly "conservative" in their world view need to think deeply about what is revealed.
Here, we have a President whose ideology is so deeply ingrained and whose commitment to that ideology is so intense that he is not willing to abandon or compromise that commitment.
On the other hand, we have people whose response to that intensity is an apparent willingness to "negotiate" and "compromise" on issues, if the other side will just agree to it. Some claim that is admirable; but, if it pertains to compromising on the very principles of liberty they are sworn to protect, is it really admirable?
They call themselves "conservatives," which is supposed to mean "conserving," or "preserving" the ideas which made this nation free and prosperous.
Conservatives should be spending their time studying and articulating the Founders' revolutionary ideas, dedicating themselves to those ideas, and committing themselves to the same principles the Founders were willing to die for. If they did so, they might be successful in a contest with the so-called "progressives," like Obama, who are willing to put their political futures on the line to "change" America from the strictly-limited constitutional government of "the People" to government by self-designated imperfect men and women who consider themselves worthy of possessing power over the lives and fortunes of other people.
LOL — well it affected you!
Hey, Fred Barnes is, well, not lazy, but come on..... The guy’s been cranking this stuff out for decades. We need some new blood. I’m tired of looking at and reading stuff by all these gray, wrinkled, tired-looking old farts who were gray, wrinkled, tired-looking old farts during Reagan’s second term in office.
Good one.
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