Posted on 01/27/2010 10:33:18 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
In the new movie The Young Victoria, the mother of Victoria and her chief overseer meet with the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, to discuss what role they’ll play now that Victoria has become queen of England. They’ve waged a fierce struggle to retain control over Victoria. Suddenly Melbourne cuts off the chatter and bluntly explains the situation. “You lost,” he says.
That’s the situation that faces President Obama and his White House advisers. Months of polls on the president and his policies, the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s elections, then last week’s momentous Massachusetts Senate race – all have sent the blunt message to Obama that, for now, he’s lost. But Obama and his team insist on pretending it’s not true.
This is a bad sign. One of the important tests of a president, especially a relatively new one like Obama, is how he deals with a serious setback. Does he respond rationally and realistically? In Obama’s case, the answer is no.
The president’s first response was to claim voters who elected Republican Scott Brown to fill the Senate seat held for decades by Teddy Kennedy were in some mysterious way actually backing Obama. “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
“People are angry and they’re frustrated,” Obama said. “Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.” He didn’t explain why, if the Brown voters were his people, why he’d campaigned for Democrat Martha Coakley, Brown’s opponent.
The next day, Obama lost his cool bearing. He resorted to crude populism, which he’d carefully avoided in his campaign and first year in office. In response to the Supreme Court ruling, on First Amendment grounds, in favor of the use of corporate funds in election contests, he didn’t offer a substantive critique, but called the decision “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”
The populism continued the next day in a speech in Ohio. “We want our money back,” he said, regarding banks that received bailout funds. “We want our money back! And we’re going to get your money back – every dime, each and every dime.”
This was the language of a rattled president in search of enemies to scapegoat. Obama didn’t mention that all but one of the major banks have paid back the bailout money with interest. There’s a word for this kind of rhetoric: Unpresidential.
Obama’s aides have been no help. They claimed it’s full speed ahead on the Obama agenda. And they stuck with the president’s insistence that Massachusetts voters were on his side.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said a Washington Post poll showed “more people voted to express support for Obama than to oppose him.” The poll found voters like the idea of health care reform and a bipartisan approach to it.
But supporting health care reform in general and ObamaCare in particular are two different things. Republicans and independents favor reform, just not Obama’s version.
And oppposing ObamaCare was Brown’s chief issue, and in every poll that asked specifically about it, voters were overwhelmingly against it. Arguing otherwise, as Gibbs did, was specious and disingenuous.
At least Obama’s aides had their stories straight, though not credible, on Brown’s victory. They didn’t in citing the discredited White House claims of jobs created and saved in 2009. Valerie Jarrett said Obama has “saved thousands and thousands,” Gibbs said the president has “saved or created 1.5 million jobs,” and political counselor David Axelrod said Obama has “created more than – or saved more than 2 million jobs.”
Meanwhile, the story broke on Sunday that Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe would return to the president’s inner circle to help plot strategy against Republicans in the midterm election and to help push the Obama agenda. The same day he offered his political advice in a Washington Post op-ed. His first recommendation was pass ObamaCare, the same measure that a solid (and still growing) majority of Americans oppose.
If he relies on advice like that, Obama will never recover. But maybe cooler heads will prevail at the White House and the president will deal more rationally in his State of the Union address on Wednesday with what Charles Krauthammer calls “empirical reality.” He’d better. His presidency is teetering on the edge of a crackup and only Obama can pull it to safety.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
From your lips to G-d’s ears
I think he’s pleased with the rate at which he is destroying this country. He’s probably ahead of his schedule. Thus the B+ self grade.
From your keyboard to God's InBox.
But..but..he’s from Chicago—they don’t break.
On “Fox News Sunday,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said a Washington Post poll showed “more people voted to express support for Obama than to oppose him.” The poll found voters like the idea of health care reform and a bipartisan approach to it.
I'm still amazed that even the dipsticks of the press corps can keep a straight face with this guy's pronouncements.
This is going to be interesting...Obama Chavez at the podium!
Actually, when it comes to wrecking our country, I’d give him a straight A for the first six months or so. He rammed through enormous deficit spending, entirely unprecedented. Not even FDR or LBJ managed to spend so much in such a short time.
Then he failed to pass Healthcare before the summer recess, as originally planned. And it’s been downhill for him ever since.
Thank God. As rush famously said, “I hope he fails.” With a straight F.
I don’t see it. The situation is outside the box of any our vaunted president has faced. For all intents and purposes, he’s a lame duck, possibly the quickest of any so far.
He’s Humpty Dumpty, after the fall.
All the King’s horses,
and all the King’s men
...could not put humpty dumpty together again.
Fail baby, fail.
I don’t think that his “I feel your pain” speech tonight is going to help him, even though he can READ it without a “Negro dialect”.
Obama is already political poison......... even to himself.
Crash and burn.
Tomorrow ABC, CBS, NBC, the NY Times and the rest of the MSM will proclaim that the big O has done just that. And they will be wrong.
At some point the liberal elite will come to know what the rank and file know. They lost Teddy's seat and they can't blame it on Bush.
Weren’t the bank bailouts his idea?
Glenn Beck did a very effective job yesterday of linking Obama’s tactics with those of Chavez. It’s not hard to see they are cut from the same cloth.
Hey little barry, fail already and go away so this country can get back to business.
If he does crack up, then I’m afraid that there will be blood in the streets. It will start in the big city Dem cities and spread from there.
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.