Posted on 07/17/2010 11:32:00 AM PDT by Brices Crossroads
Weren’t we all?
It just means he is sucking along with the crowd.
“Well, then, it’s a very good thing that you’ve thrown your gigantic brain into the fray, to show us what REAL intelligence looks like.”
Now that’s an intelligent post. Glad you decided to weigh in on the merits. Did you read that article (either one) after I posted the link you asked for? Or were you still playing in your sand box?
Why?
Demography.
Blacks vote 9 to 1 against Conservatives, new citizens vote 3 to 1 against, and Hispanics vote 2 to 1 against.
Non-whites and the foreign-born are about 30% of the voting age population, their population is growing rapidly, and every year they register and vote in higher numbers.
Whites vote about 60%-40% in favor of Conservatives, but the white population is barely growing, and every year their share of the total vote gets smaller.
Example...
If the ethnic and racial make up of the USA in 2008 had been the same as it was in 1984, John McCain would have been elected president.
At best, GOP gains in the House and Senate will equal the historical average for off year elections.
I've read his column, but not ONLY this one column, his other columns as well.
When Krauthammer says it "necessitates" a huge tax increase, he is telling us what the political dynamics are. He does not FAVOR a huge tax increase. He does not FAVOR the massive expansion of the welfare state Obama has pushed.
He has discussed this at length before. Krauthammer is advising us to start fighting the coming tax increase NOW:
************************
OBAMACARE'S NEXT TRICK: THE VAT
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, March 26, 2010
As the night follows the day, VAT follows health-care reform.
With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable. Obamacare was sold on the premise that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, "health-care reform is entitlement reform. Our budget cannot take this upward spiral of cost." But the bill enacted on Tuesday accelerates the spiral: It radically expands Medicaid (adding 15 million recipients/dependents) and shamelessly raids Medicare by spending on a new entitlement the $500 billion in cuts and the yield from the Medicare tax hikes.
snip
Obama knows that the debt bomb is looming, that Moody's is warning that the Treasury's AAA rating is in jeopardy, that we are headed for a run on the dollar and/or hyperinflation if nothing is done.
Hence his deficit-reduction commission. It will report (surprise!) after the November elections.
snip
That's where the value-added tax comes in. For the politician, it has the virtue of expediency: People are used to sales taxes, and this one produces a river of revenue. Every 1 percent of VAT would yield up to $1 trillion a decade (depending on what you exclude -- if you exempt food, for example, the yield would be more like $900 billion).
It's the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent. France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.
American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care. Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.
Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama's triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan's strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes -- then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.
Obama's strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast and then feed it. Spend first -- which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.
snip
It will take a while to break the American populace to that idea. In the meantime, get ready for the VAT. Or start fighting it.
read the full column here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032502406_pf.html
BC writes, “He is attracted to Obama because Obama IS an elitist.”
BC hasn’t read Krauthammer, unless he thinks Krauthammer’s severe criticism—the most succinct and forceful—counts as an attraction. That’s my benign response. I should really imitate Megyn Kelly: You haven’t read Krauthammer, BC.
This is where that old "I'd rather kill you than listen to you because I'm a doctor and you're not" arrogance of the medical graduate kicks into play.
It's a good thing he isn't practising medicine.
Some famous philospher said that genius/intelligence doesn’t mean you necessarily choose the right path/direction- it just allows you to get where you’re going faster.
If you watch/listen/read Krauthammer regularly then you know that doesn’t agree with Obama on anything. I agree with Krauthammer.
He is joined by Peggy Noonan, Kathleen Parker and David Frum - all "conservatives" according to their resumes and the media. All of them can and have presented views that align with conservatives.
But when push comes to shove, they are all indeed elitists. When Palin came on the scene, they acted as if she had a communicable disease. All of these highbrow "conservatives" couldn't believe that someone so common had been elevated to the VP nomination.
Instead of genuinely celebrating the rise of a new political star - one who had a resume of accomplishment and who connected amazingly well with average voters, they dismissed her because she didn't have the right pedigree. Sarah Palin wears her ordinariness like a badge of honor, and this terrifies elitists.
Peggy Noonan used to write speeches for Reagan, and if Palin resembles anyone politically, it's him. But Noonan couldn't pull her head out of her elitist a** to appreciate someone her former boss would have truly admired.
I know that Charles doesn’t like Sarah Palin because he thinks she isn’t worthy to breathe or share the lofty air of the Washington elite. He’s more appalled than impressed by her down home rhetoric that only soars with us flyover folks.
That said I like Charles and I find his mind amazing in most matters and usually agree with him, but as you have pointed out in your column, Charles is still smartin’ from the smack downs RWR gave his boys Carter and Mondale and I think he’s transferring a good deal of his “*inner-Leftie Charles* and *still smartin’ from the Cowboy Charles*” onto Sarah Palin, who’s starting to really remind him of RWR, especially given the stark realities of Obama looking worse than Carter...LOL. And who said “history repeats?”
IOW, Charles might be thinking..... “God save his elite Washington, DC from another Cowboy and this one’s in a skirt!”
Well done, Brices Crossroads!
Elite and elitism is a word of the left.
The writer and Krauthammer are both right.
Krauthammer may not be completely enamored with Obama’s policies and accomplishments, but he does turn around and praise him with every deed or accomplishment by Obama.
But, Krauthammer is right about Obama having done many things during the first 1 1/2 years. It doesn’t matter that most or all of the accomplishments are opposed by most of the people or that those accomplishments will be eventually harmful to the country.
What Obama is good at is using the time he has to get his radical agenda passed. He is a true radical of the worst kind who knows that once a program is in place, it’s very hard to undo in the future. Therefore, Obama will throw everything he can at the wall knowing that, even if some of his programs or policies are overturned, many will be left in place, just like Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security and the intrusion by the federal government into education, and all of the other social programs which the republicans never bother to try to repeal once they’re in power.
So, though Krauthammer may sound like he’s praising Obama, he’s not totally wrong when it comes to the success that Obama has had.
Look: Lord Acton said "Power tends to corrupt." There is no mystery here. He didn't exclude conservatives. To expect conservatives to grasp power and not be corrupted, at least somewhat, is to be naive and unrealistic and expect them to be what no one has reliably been, not even religious leaders.
The key is oversight and a vigilant citizenry.
The mistake of the GOP has been that these shit-hypocrites pretend to be above corruption and when it surfaces they don't support their colleague, (EG) Tom DeLay, they pitch him under the bus.
As wretched as democrat politicans are, they at least are realistic enough to know that a congressman saved today is more important than a gesture of sanctimony which will be at best ignored and soon forgotten tomorrow.
“But, Krauthammer is right about Obama having done many things during the first 1 1/2 years. It doesn’t matter that most or all of the accomplishments are opposed by most of the people or that those accomplishments will be eventually harmful to the country.”
That is undeniable. I object both to the awe in which he seems to hold Obama and to the permanence which he seems to ascribe to Obama’s programs and to the inevitability with which he seems to see future tax increases. Krauthammer’s defenders here dont’ want to discuss that. All they want to do is to remind me how much Krauthammer disagrees with Obama. So what. He proposes absolutely nothing to counteract Obama. His only conclusion is “don’t underestimate him. He’s far sighted.”
Conservatives are not going to underestimate him. We are going to defeat him. And not by accepting his usurpations as a fait accompli.
Conservatism recognizes a stratification in society. Democracies (rule by the demos) is not typically conservative. The American presidency is rarely held by anything but a representative of the masses.
That is completely misreading what I posted.
Krauthammer, a statist at heart, sees Obama's "accomplishments" as a political positive, even though they are toxic and wildly unpopular: "He got something done", even though it is the consensus of the American people that what he did was bad for the country and all its citizens. Reagan too accomplished things in his first term, notably the tax cuts of 1981 which were very popular and which had reinvigorated the severely ailing economy, which Reagan inherited, by late 1983.
I think that it may be you that is skewing the impression of the facts here. Reagan was elected in 1980 and the tax cuts of 1981 were his accomplishment, not a failed accomplishment of a prior administration. This was a great success for President Reagan. The "accomplishments" of Obama can be the death knoll for this great Country.
Krautheimer is pointing out that there is a difference between good and evil. What RR did was great as compared to the evil accomplishishments of Obama. Though what Obama is doing is ruinous, in my world it still is legislation of epic proportions. You think that all of this can be easily reversed. I'm not so sure. Whatever legislation a hopefully Republican Congressional majority may get passed will be vetoed by Obama. Ergo very little can be corrected unless we get a Republican president in 2012 along with a Republican Congress. The amount of damage done by then will be staggering and tough to reverse. And if it can be fixed it will certainly not be until after 3-4 or more years from now.
Additionally even with an optomistic viewpoint for the coming election, the outlook for a post election push for all the rest of their Communist/Socialist ideas to get passed will make matters even worse.
I would like to see a real fillibuster be used for the entire time from the 2010 election until the new Congress is installed in January.
You remind me of the farmer who complained about his horse: “Undeniably, the horse pulls well, but she absolutely doesn’t milk. All she does is run and pull.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.