- China's Hu Rebuffs Obama on Yuan
- South Korea Trade Deal Stalls
- Obama Talks Tough on North Korea
- American Middle Class Downsizes as its Jobs Vanish, Move Away
- WH Opposes Top Rate Extension
- RCP Video Cashin: QE2 Looks Like Titanic
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Headlines Tell It All
Sometimes, you don't even need to read news stories to get a feel for the nature of the Federal government today. This list of sidebar stories on RCP tell you pretty much what you need to know about the disaster that is Barack Obama.
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2 comments:
Listen to the way that Andrew Sullivan describes Obama:
Emergency measures in a near-unprecedented economic collapse - the bank bailout, the auto-bailout, the stimulus - were described by the right as ideological moves of choice, when they were, in fact, pragmatic moves of necessity. The increasingly effective isolation of Iran's regime - and destruction of its legitimacy from within - was portrayed as a function of Obama's weakness, rather than his strength. The health insurance reform - almost identical to Romney's, to the right of the Clintons in 1993, costed to reduce the deficit, without a public option, and with millions more customers for the insurance and drug companies - was turned into a socialist government take-over.
Every one of these moves could be criticized in many ways. What cannot be done honestly, in my view, is to create a narrative from all of them to describe Obama as an anti-American hyper-leftist, spending the US into oblivion. But since this seems to be the only shred of thinking left on the right (exacerbated by the justified flight of the educated classes from a party that is now openly contemptuous of learning), it became a familiar refrain - pummeled into our heads day and night by talk radio and Fox. If you think I'm exaggerating, try the following thought experiment.
If a black Republican president had come in, helped turn around the banking and auto industries (at a small profit!), insured millions through the private sector while cutting Medicare, overseen a sharp decline in illegal immigration, ramped up the war in Afghanistan, reinstituted pay-as-you go in the Congress, set up a debt commission to offer hard choices for future debt reduction, and seen private sector job growth outstrip the public sector's in a slow but dogged recovery, somehow I don't think that Republican would be regarded as a socialist.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/11/the-rights-accuracy-problem.html
This is the way Leftists see Obama, as a constructive centrist managing the country better than the Republicans. And if you call Obama a socialist, then you must be a Right wing ideologue as well as an extremist, hatemongering wingnut.
How is even possible to share the same polity with these people?
Thanks, Max, for that post. It's illuminating of a certain type of, well thinking would be too generous a word, but you know what I mean.
(Just as one minor point, the idea that Obama re-instituted pay-as-you-go in Congress is ludicrous. First, the Democrats don't do that by a long shot - nor do the Republicans, I readily acknowledge - but more to the point, how could Obama do that when he's not in Congress?)
Anyway, to your question:
"How is even possible to share the same polity with these people?"
I've often asked myself the same question. I think the only reasonable, non-violent answer is: by removing their political power and massive cultural influence.
When they are reduced once again to a cranky rabble influencing only those who can hear them speak on a street corner, they will no longer be a threat.
Then one can live with them, by ignoring them.
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