Of course, they think they’re doing something else entirely — Jeb Bush, for instance, thought that by helping Obama in Florida, he was appealing to “moderates” and paving the way for his 2016 presidential run, which I can already tell you from my perspective is dead in the water — but regardless of what they think they’re doing, what they are actually doing is help portray the TEA Party as part of an extremist right wing fringe, particularly inasmuch as it is ruthlessly and directly pushing back against a non-radical Good Man who is simply governing as a typical Democrat does.
But of course, Obama’s failed policies are not necessarily what’s at issue: we know tax and spend doesn’t work, that it never has, and that expanding the federal government has given us nothing but spiraling debt, failing schools, and endless bureaucracy that is killing business and jobs. The problem is, Obama knows this too — and if he didn’t before, he most surely does after two years and a real unemployment rate that, using Bush-era workforce numbers, would resolve to around 11 or 12%. Which leads one to ask, if he knows what he’s doing doesn’t work, why double down in the face of public pushback? Why submit a budget with a $1.6 trillion shortfall after an election fueled by TEA Party complaints of overreaching and overspending? Why repeatedly refuse to allow oil drilling or coal mining? Why use the power of your regulatory agencies to get implemented dictates that you couldn’t get passed into law — and that you know the American people don’t want? Why? To what end?
To continue with the charade that Obama is a garden variety liberal Democrat of some previous vintage who has the best intentions for America simply ignores the evidence — from all that Stanley Kurtz has documented to Obama’s very real attempts to devalue the currency; to take the side of union bosses over struggling tax payers; to “nudge” us all toward green energy and “proper” food intake; to stand back and allow his leftist attack dogs to pin shootings on political rivals and critics; and on and on and on, right down to federal takeovers of industry, crony capitalism and union favoritism, and an end game that leaves Americans with a single payer health care leviathan controlled by the government that most of us simply don’t want (and have made repeatedly clear).
If Obama is a garden-variety liberal Democrat, that’s only because the Democrat party has been overtaken by what was the New Left, who have simply re-branded themselves as Democrats and liberals while governing as “progressives” and socialists.
The federal government is dramatically expanding under Obama; the private sector is shrinking. Obama has made clear his desire to “transform” the nation and a desire to “spread the wealth.” Transform the nation into what, exactly? And to what end?
How many more breadcrumbs must this guy leave before some on the right will wake up and get over their need to show knee-jerk deference to a man who clearly holds the “teabaggers” and “bitter clingers” — that is, the constitutionalists, the classical liberals, the Reagan Democrats, and the fiscal and social conservatives — in utter contempt?
So yes. By all means. Let’s revive that strategy — the one where WE insist Obama is more centrist and pragmatic than he actually is, and where WE move leftward in order to approximate the “centrism” and “pragmatism” WE have bestowed on an Alinsky-ite whose entire political career is owed to Chicago leftwing academics, unrepentant domestic terrorists, and Chicago socialists and professional mau mauers.
Because that worked out so well for Senator McCain.
(thanks to geoffB)
I’m having trouble deciding which term applies better to Michael Medved, “quisling” or “milquetoast”. Think I’ll use both.
The way to beat Obama is on principle and clear message. Same ol’ Same ‘ol is not going to cut it.
Okay. I agree that what is now “mainstream” in the Democrat party is anything but maintstream in the United States. But Obama’s policies are socialistic, they are designed to create fundamental change that is harmful (whether they subjectively think it is for the good is not the point), and this out of control spending and entitlement expansion needs to be stopped. Attacking conservatives is not the way to do it Michael. The way to do it is to constantly point out the differences and why the Democrats are wrong.
What is the difference between Obama and Chavez? Both foment dissent and subvert the rule of law. Does imitation of Chavez imply the same ends for our constitution? Is Chavez a good man?
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/no-3-house-dem-to-join-louis-farrakhan-for-program-on-disappearing-black-community/
Nothing radical at all about the Democrat Party. Move along, move along…
The disappearing black community? Ponder this… as mixed marriages and ‘couplings’ become more common place, how many of the resulting kids are classified as ‘white?”
What would Halle Berry do?
I would like to see Mr. Medved construct a left/right political scale where he places these people and others in each Party. A scale where he gives us the details of what factors he is using to judge what makes one to be on the Left and on the Right.
Now this,
is pure misdirection and flim-flam that is not worthy of being put out in a publication such as the WSJ. The “leftist activists and academics from outside the D.C. establishment” are mostly below cabinet level and/or among the many “czars”. The cabinet level contains Leftists who are part of the D.C. establishment. Throwing straw is not what one should do in a nationally published editorial.
What the government is up against in the fight against unions – Strange But True Provisions of Collective Bargaining Contracts
I think Walker should have labeled it ‘Government Jobs – Are They Really Work-Work?’
What is, “Against the will of the American people”, Alex?
Stephanie, do any of those contracts say anything about brown M&M’s?
Geoff —
I was going to mention that in the post — that the socialists are all sub rosa in (hell, the guy hadn’t even met with half his cabinet until recently) — but honestly, Medved’s agenda is clear enough that I didn’t feel the need to get in the weeds with the guy.
Well, it’s not called the stupid party for nothing. And Michael Medved? My left wing whackjob dad has a couple of his books. They’re kept right by the Paul Krugman, EJ Dionne and Noam Chomsky books. He’s a solid conservative/classical liberal indeed ;)
McG: ?? Brown M&Ms? I’m in dense (blonde) mode this morning. It’s raining and I’m not playing golf, dammit!
Bottle water v tap water for meetings? No brown M&Ms for rock stars? That kinda thing?
What in the world is Medved talking about?
Obama is somehow mainstream, because he’s merely as radical as FDR? Maybe I’m a fringer, but does anyone else hear doubt that FDR was a socialist who’s failed economic policies, and political and historical “legacy” as well, were saved only by the intervening Second World War and the period unprecedented and unrivaled US economic superiority that followed it; that phenomenal growth and the resulting wealth masking the inherent problems with FDR’s “transformation” of America?
Is Roosevelt now somehow a moderate for not choosing to go full on Soviet style communist, and just go communist-lite instead; for not fully exploiting the crisis of the onset of the great depression?
Or LBJ? For cynically pushing the “Great Society” reforms, through an overwhelmingly Democrat Congress, to cement the gains in voter allegiance realized in the wake of the Civil Rights act? And further making seniors beholden on the largesse of the state via medicare/medicaid? Programs whose costs were wildly underestimated at the time of their adoption, much like Social Security, and as the apparent flaws have come into focus have been cynically demagogued by the same Democrats instead of being adjusted or corrected…
So Medved is telling us that cynical opportunism and stealth socialism is what we should take for granted as mainstream? Tell me why I should attach any weight at all to his ridiculous opinion?
He’s buying into the revisionistic lionization of LBJ and FDR; I’m surprised he didn’t find a way to work Obama-as-Wilson or JFK into his drivel. The facts are, for me at least, there is little to admire about the record of any of these Presidents, and while I’m willing to respect office of the Presidency, per se-I’m not going to revere it as Medved has suggested patriotic Americans must, I simply don’t find his argument that Obama is mainstream because he’s acting as radically as others have in the past to be either logical or convincing.
just my two cents.
I (briefly) heard Medved on the radio earlier this week. He was complaining about “the feminization of American men”.
I laughed.
And turned the damned thing off again.
That was what I had in mind — though brown water for union members seems fitting, as long as it’s not brown single-malt water-of-life.
Ok, thanks. Maybe the fog’s lifting or the peroxide is fading because I wasn’t as d’ohpid as I initially thought I was. Progress!
Ask me again in January, year TBD.
[…] Good men, these. Right, Mr Medved? […]
“So Medved is telling us that cynical opportunism and stealth socialism is what we should take for granted as mainstream? “
Yes Bob, yes he is.
“Medved’s agenda is clear enough that I didn’t feel the need to get in the weeds with the guy.”
But Jeff, no one can eviscerate stupidity like you!
Maybe, if instead of thinking it as “weeds”, you see it as trees, and your’re a lumberjack baby!
Giv’em some wood.
No brown M&Ms for rock stars? That kinda thing?
To be fair, the reason they put those riders in their contracts was to spot-check how thoroughly the venue staff had read and complied with the band’s specifications.
If there was a bowl of M&Ms in the green room with now brown ones, they could assume that the other stuff was done, too. Like putting a $20 bill in your Masters thesis to see if anyone’s read it.
Why, to win the future of course! Y’know Jeff, you keep trying to stand athwart history like this, you’re going to get run over.