For those of us on the right and many centrists, it's been quite a show watching liberals constantly twisting themselves in knots trying to defend Obama on many issues that are utterly indefensible. The thinking goes that Obama was left a stinking economy, two wars and myriad other issues that the hated Dubya left behind for him to contend with. It's no wonder he can't get anything done. If the obstructionist GOP would just step aside and let the Light Bringer spread his gospel of Keynesianism, the country would be healed and the oceans would start to recede.
The meme has mutated into the revisionist belief that Congress has been thwarting his every move since his inauguration and it's not entirely his fault. This, of course, requires one to ignore forget that he had no impediments in Congress at the onset of his administration.
Now the leading Obama hack, Jonathan Chait, begins a new meme and starts the reconstruction process with this disjointed and flawed piece in the NY Times:
Rather than deploy every ounce of his leverage to force moderate Republicans, whose votes he needed, to swallow a larger stimulus than they wanted, Obama clearly husbanded some of his political capital. Why? Because in the position of choosing between the agenda he came into office hoping to enact and the short-term imperative of economic rescue, he picked the former. At the time, this was the course liberals wanted and centrists opposed.Emphasis mine.
On two subsequent occasions, Obama faced this same choice. Last December, he could have refused to extend any of the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000. Republicans vowed to let all the tax cuts expire if he did so. If Obama let this happen, it would have almost fully solved the long-term deficit problem, while at the same time setting back the recovery by raising taxes on middle-class and low-income workers. Obama decided to make a deal, extending all the Bush tax cuts and also securing a progressive payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits, both forms of stimulus that Republicans would never have allowed without an extension of upper-bracket tax cuts in return.
So where to begin on this? Obama isn't weak according to Chait, he was just caught in a web that forced tough decisions to be made. He had to steer through a hurricane of the GOP's making and still keep the country afloat. He was prudent, conciliatory and pragmatic when it was needed.
They still don't get it, do they?
Liberals got caught up in Hope and Change fever and the only prescription was Obamanomics. They allowed a thoroughly unvetted candidate to win the Democratic nomination eschewing a proven veteran in Hillary. Hillary had been through the wars going back to 1992 when she was co-president with Slick Willy. She knows exactly how to ram legislation through and when to use a little finesse.
Obama on the other hand is not being stopped by that conservative stalwart David Boehner (drenching sarcasm) but by his own limitations. He's an amateur in the big show. He's a talented kid who can hit the fastball a country mile but got exposed when he had to face change-ups and curves in single A. Hillary at the least had some executive experience working at law firms and working beside Bubba in both the White House and the Arkansas governor's mansion. Obama had zero experience but thought his sheer brilliance was enough to direct the nation. Unfortunately, intestinal fortitude is not a trait one can pick up on the fly but one that is ingrained from and early age and developed. Obama never had to make decisions because no one ever called him out when he didn't. He voted present and if you didn't like it you were either stupid or racist.
Now here we are; stuck in the morass of stagnant employment, enormous debts and an uncertain business climate. Instead of belt-tightening and austerity we get another speech that's going to lay out another plan that will do exactly what every other Obama-designed one has--wither on the vine and die while not producing one single positive result. Here's one example among a plethora: we did not create a single job last month--something that hasn't happened since 1945.
Chait and the rest of the liberal media echo chamber still haven't gotten it. Obama just isn't that smart and just isn't that capable of leading this once-great nation. People are realizing it more every day and no, it's not because America is an inherently racist republic as all liberals believe but simply because the man is not up to the challenge.
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I voted for Hillary after Obama mad that disgusting comment about my homeboyz n grrlz back in Pennsylvania. Also, he bowls like a whippet taking a dump on a $50,000 Berber rug.
But I digress. If Obama had campaigned as, say, a good moderate conservative Democrat--sort of a latter day Eisenhower with more social liberalism and more fiscal conservatism--I'd'a considered voting for him. I didn't. In fact the only times I've liked him this past year or so is when he's had the nads to do what needs to be done from a stance of praxis.
I happen to have very lefty progressive views on all sorts of things...but I would not necessarily vote for certain people for certain jobs who have those views. For instance, my ideal SCOTUS judge is strongly pro Second Amendment *and* strongly pro choice. But I would not admire any candidate for SCOTUS who was so partial; it's not their job.
Ditto for POTUS: the person in that position should be a skilled executive officer. I can understand the Democrats not wanting to let Palin get near the football...and so doing what they had to do to rally their needed voting base of clueless slacker hipster twentysomethings with free Che and Mumia t-shirts and graffiti "artist" posters.
But Obama has been mostly a disaster. He's the ultimate corporation man, and in my view he has no allegiance to the US, or its rank and file people. He's a globalista who has always followed the main chance. I find it endlessly fascinating that someone who is half one "race" and half another "race" gets to choose which "race" to present themselves as.
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