Looking Ahead: Obama, 2012 & The Biggest Republican Weakness (Updated)

Charles Krauthammer issues a warning to the right on Obama. Karl Rove admits to the greatest failing of the Bush Administration - failing to respond to the lies of the left. And then there is the question of what this means for Republicans in 2012.

A cautionary note is sounded by Charles Krauthammer in his article this week - don't take Obama for granted. According to Krauthammer, Obama has sacrificed Congressional Democrats in order to transform America into his vision of a socialist utopia. But, as Krauthammer notes, his low point today does not translate into weakness two years from now. This from Mr. Krauthammer:

In the political marketplace, there's now a run on Obama shares. The left is disappointed with the president. Independents are abandoning him in droves. And the right is already dancing on his political grave, salivating about November when, his own press secretary admitted Sunday, Democrats might lose the House.

I have a warning for Republicans: Don't underestimate Barack Obama.

Consider what he has already achieved. Obamacare alone makes his presidency historic. It has irrevocably changed one-sixth of the economy, put the country inexorably on the road to national health care and, as acknowledged by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus but few others, begun one of the most massive wealth redistributions in U.S. history.

Second, there is major financial reform, which passed Congress on Thursday. Economists argue whether it will prevent meltdowns and bailouts as promised. But there is no argument that it will give the government unprecedented power in the financial marketplace. Its 2,300 pages will create at least 243 new regulations that will affect not only, as many assume, the big banks but just about everyone, including, as noted in one summary (the Wall Street Journal), "storefront check cashiers, city governments, small manufacturers, home buyers and credit bureaus."

Third is the near $1 trillion stimulus, the largest spending bill in U.S. history. And that's not even counting nationalizing the student loan program, regulating carbon emissions by Environmental Protection Agency fiat, and still-fitful attempts to pass cap-and-trade through Congress.

But Obama's most far-reaching accomplishment is his structural alteration of the U.S. budget. The stimulus, the vast expansion of domestic spending, the creation of ruinous deficits as far as the eye can see are not easily reversed.

These are not mere temporary countercyclical measures. They are structural deficits because, as everyone from Obama on down admits, the real money is in entitlements, most specifically Medicare and Medicaid. But Obamacare freezes these out as a source of debt reduction. Obamacare's $500 billion in Medicare cuts and $600 billion in tax increases are siphoned away for a new entitlement -- and no longer available for deficit reduction.

The result? There just isn't enough to cut elsewhere to prevent national insolvency. That will require massive tax increases -- most likely a European-style value-added tax. Just as President Ronald Reagan cut taxes to starve the federal government and prevent massive growth in spending, Obama's wild spending -- and quarantining health-care costs from providing possible relief -- will necessitate huge tax increases.

. . . The critics don't understand the big picture. Obama's transformational agenda is a play in two acts.

Act One is over. The stimulus, Obamacare, financial reform have exhausted his first-term mandate. It will bear no more heavy lifting. And the Democrats will pay the price for ideological overreaching by losing one or both houses, whether de facto or de jure. . . .

The next burst of ideological energy -- massive regulation of the energy economy, federalizing higher education and "comprehensive" immigration reform (i.e., amnesty) -- will require a second mandate, meaning reelection in 2012.

That's why there's so much tension between Obama and congressional Democrats. For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 reelection campaign. . . .

The real prize is 2012. Obama sees far, farther than even his own partisans. Republicans underestimate him at their peril.

In the WSJ, Karl Rove admitted that his single greatest mistake was his failure to anticipate the effect of the left's relentless, baseless attacks on Bush and his veracity - all repeated ad infinitum by a left wing MSM dedicated to the end of the Bush presidency. This admission is not exactly earth shattering. Indeed, for years now, I have been screaming that the failure to communicate and respond to these endless attacks was the greatest failing of the Bush Administration - and Republicans generally in all situations. I am convinced that McCain lost the election because of his failure to aggressively attack Obama in the debates and the failure of the entire Republican Party as a whole to respond to the left's outrageous charge that the right was responsible for our financial nightmare. For example, this from September, 2008:

For every ten Democrats I have heard baldly blame the Republicans for the subprime crisis, and for every Democrat I have heard speak against McCain's presence in the negotiations, I have heard maybe one Republican speak to the contrary. Some of the worst was last night, listening to CNN, listening to Paul Begala heap scorn on Republicans for the subprime crisis while the token Republican on the panel remained silent in the face of complete falsehoods. Further, I just listened to Harry Reid and Chris Dodd - two people up to their eyes in direct responsiblity for this subprime crisis - hold a news conference giving their CYF (Cover Your Fannie) story on all of this, including with blame for McCain, with no corresponding attempt by Republicans to respond in kind.

The Republicans are pristine in comparison to Democrats as regards the subprime crisis that has brought our economy to the brink of depression. . . . For Republicans to cede the narrative on this is the height of incompetence. Unless and until they become absolutely vociferous in getting out their message, the left will ever increase their stanglehold on America, much to America's detriment.

And much to America's detriment it has been indeed. Just yesterday, supposedly in order to insure that another meltdown never happens again, the left passed a 2,000 plus page nightmare regulation of our financial industry. The fault for the subprime meltdown lies with the left. The fault for the passage of this financial monstrosity that addresses everything but the actual cause of our financial meltdown lies squarely with Republican leadership for their near total inability to communicate.

Having watched the current crop of Congressional Republicans for years now, I am under no illusion that, come 2012, they will be able to effectively communicate. The backlash we see against Obama's policies and vast overreach today has come from the bottom up, with the Tea Parties and social networking. It has nothing whatsoever to do with Congressional Republicans. That does not bode well for the right come 2012.

That said, as I look out at the field of potential candidates who could possibly communicate effectively - those with the necessary intelligence and aggressiveness to actually call the left on their falsehoods and change the national paradigm - the only one I see today who foots that bill is Newt Gingrich.

Update: Bookworm Room has written a post on these topics, commenting on the issues raised by Krauthammer, a post by Jonah Goldberg, and a comment from a fiery young ideologue on the above topics. As is everything Ms. BWR writes, it is thought provoking on the issue of Republican chances and options looking forward to 2012.

In her post, BWR makes the point that any consideration of Gingrich must take into account his having suffered 20 years of MSM demonization. That said, how much trust lies in the MSM now days? The MSM gave us Obama, and it would seem from the polls today, much of America realizes they have been had - and know where that responsiblity lies. Could this be an example of Goldberg's thesis - that the rules have changed and the MSM hatred of Gingrich is a plus? I don't think that is beyond the realm of possiblity.. At any rate, I think Gingrich quite capable of running against Obama and a corrupt MSM, pointing out the follies and biases of both.

Whomever Republicans run, they must not adhere to the McCain line of treating Obama with the utmost respect. If you recall the "debates," the low point of Obama's performance came when he was getting directly challenged. For example, he was extremely uncomfortable - indeed, near petulant - when having to explain his way around his "bitter clingers" statement and challenges to his honesty. We need a highly aggressive debater who is going to use the word "bullshit" - or one of its synonyms - every time its appropriate and challenge Obama, for Obama is nothing if not petty and clearly he does not like to be challenged. That is one of the reasons I think Gingrich would be the perfect candidate to go against Obama. Every sentence would be a knife. And we need Obama fileted in 2012.

Here is hoping he does decide to run.

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Obama - Lesson Not Learned

The message of Massachusetts has clearly passed right over the head of our President without even stopping for a moment to sojourn between his rather prodigious ears. According to Obama, the problem is not that any of his massive assaults on our economy are at the heart of the Mass. rebellion, but rather it has been his inability to properly explain his programs - and that, Obama tells us, is because he has been too busy. This from the Washington Post:

Obama said the relentless pursuit of his domestic policies -- and a failure to adequately explain their virtues -- had left Americans with a "feeling of remoteness and detachment" from the flurry of government actions in Washington.

"We were so busy just getting stuff done and dealing with the immediate crises that were in front of us that I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values," he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

Obama has appeared on our screens so often the past year that he practically has his own weekly time slot. With the exception of Fox and the WSJ, his coverage has been so favorable and one sided across the entire spectrum of the MSM that it has been near obscene. Indeed, the relationship between the President and NBC/MSNBC news crews has been such that I am amazed that none of the members of those crews have yet to come down with e-coli infections. And still, Obama thinks his problem is an inability to get the benefits of his plans favorably across to the public?

And do note Obama's choice of words - "speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are . . ." Is there any way to interpret that other than that Obama feels we need his assistance to identify and define our "core" American values? Could that be any more offensive? This man's arrogance and condescension are limitless. The only reason he needs to identify these values is because he is attempting to redefine them to comport with his socialist world view -a view that he recasts in the words of morality.

And this also from the WaPo article:

The White House had already begun a determined effort to pivot its message to expressions of concern about the economy and jobs as it prepares for congressional midterm elections in November. Tuesday's defeat made that shift in rhetoric even more urgent.

How incompetent must these people be to believe that a single problem we face will be solved, that a single job will be created, that a single drop of energy will be produced, by not more than a change in "rhetoric." I said in an earlier post that, at this point, my perception of Obama is that he is an ideologue - a fanatic. And this proves my point. He is unable to see outside his ideological paradigm. And if the public does not share his beliefs, than there is no thought given to changing his paradigm and plans, but merely to talk more persuasively. Though I suppose this is at least an inch in the right direction. It was only last week that Obama was yet again blaming Bush for the economy and, in an added twist, blaming Republicans for obstructionism - when Democrats have held a supermajority in Congress for the past year. This man is drowning.

Karl Rove, writing in the WSJ, weighed in today on the fiscal mess Obama has charted for us during his first year in office:

. . . Mr. Axelrod wrote that no one is entitled to his own facts, even as he argued that George W. Bush is responsible for Barack Obama's deficits. He argued that Mr. Bush forced the hand of this administration by leaving office in the midst of a sharp recession.

That argument won't fly for two reasons. First, at some point this administration has to take responsibility for itself. It's also not even close to accurate. Consider that from Jan. 20, 2001, to Jan. 20, 2009, the debt held by the public grew $3 trillion under Mr. Bush—to $6.3 trillion from $3.3 trillion at a time when the national economy grew as well.

By comparison, from the day Mr. Obama took office last year to the end of the current fiscal year, according to the Office of Management and Budget, the debt held by the public will grow by $3.3 trillion. In 20 months, Mr. Obama will add as much debt as Mr. Bush ran up in eight years.

Mr. Obama's spending plan approved by Congress last February calls for doubling the national debt in five years and nearly tripling it in 10.

Mr. Bush's deficits ran an average of 3.2% of GDP, slightly above the post World War II average of 2.7%. Mr. Obama's plan calls for deficits that will average 4.2% over the next decade.

Team Obama has been on history's biggest spending spree, which has included a $787 billion stimulus, a $30 billion expansion of a child health-care program, and a $410 billion federal spending bill that increased nondefense discretionary spending 10% for the last half of fiscal year 2009. Mr. Obama also hiked nondefense discretionary spending another 12% for fiscal year 2010.

Mr. Bush did move to give voters more control over their tax dollars. Both his Social Security reform ideas and the drug program he created offered templates for driving federal spending curves in the right direction, counter to what Democrats wanted to do.

Democrats, for example, proposed creating a prescription drug program as an alternative to the one Mr. Bush proposed that would have cost a projected $800 billion over 10 years. The Bush drug benefit was originally expected to cost half that amount and today costs a third less than what it was initially expected to cost because it uses market forces to drive prices down.

Mr. Axelrod claims the pork-laden stimulus package has been a success. But Mr. Obama told Americans that if it were passed, unemployment wouldn't rise above 8%. It is now 10%. The president also said it would create 3.7 million jobs, 90% of which would be in the private sector. By Mr. Obama's standards, the stimulus failed miserably.

Mr. Bush did sign the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) into law and loaned $240 billion to banks. But those loans are being returned at a profit to the Treasury. Rather than using those funds to pay down the deficit, Mr. Obama wants to use them for new spending. What's more, he has lavished some $320 billion from TARP on car companies, union allies, and pet causes that will never be fully returned.

Mr. Axelrod boasts Mr. Obama's proposed health reforms will "not add to the federal deficit." But if that turns out to be true, it will only be because Massachusetts voters just elected a senator who promises to vote against those reforms.

In going after Mr. Bush's fiscal record, Mr. Axelrod unwittingly revealed why Democrats are losing. Mr. Obama and congressional Democrats have made a mess of the nation's finances and are desperate to pin the blame on someone else. It's not likely to work.

Even in deep blue Massachusetts, voters aren't standing idly by while the administration puts the nation on a dangerous trajectory. When Democrats lose a state they carried by 26 points a little more than a year ago, very little is safe for Mr. Obama's party this fall.

Obama has floated another smoke and mirrors plan to address the deficit, even as it is he and his party that are driving up the spending and deficit. That plan would essentially move responsibility for taxing and spending out of Congress and put it into the hands of a partisan-weighted commission. This commission would do nothing more than duplicate the work that Congress already does in committee. How an extra layer of duplicative bureaucracy will be a panacea for our economic ill is not at once obvious. This from WaPo:

Under the agreement, President Obama would issue an executive order to create an 18-member panel that would be granted broad authority to propose changes in the tax code and in the massive federal entitlement programs -- including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security -- that threaten to drive the nation's debt to levels not seen since World War II. . . .

The commission is likely to form the centerpiece of Democrats' efforts to reduce projected budget deficits, which have soared into record territory in the aftermath of the worst recession in a generation. Government spending to bail out the troubled financial sector and to stimulate economic activity have combined with sagging tax collections to push last year's budget deficit to a record $1.4 trillion. The budget gap is projected to be just as large this year and to hover close to $1 trillion a year for much of the next decade. . . .

. . . House leaders are insisting, however, that they will not go along with the commission's creation unless the Senate does approve stringent pay-as-you-go budget rules, an outcome that is far from certain. Such rules, which helped produce budget surpluses under President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s, bar lawmakers from approving legislation that increases the deficit.

That last paragraph is so wrong on so many levels. For one, the Clinton surpluses came not from pay-as-you-go rules, but by changing Social Security into a ponzi scheme, with excess Soc. Sec. receipts being transferred to our general funds and spent annually by Congress. Two, the House legislation for "pay as you go" contains massive loop holes for deficit spending for all of Obama's economy killing socialist plans. Three, the only substantive effect that the House legislation would really have would be to permanently end the use of tax cuts to stimulate the economy. The President is certainly capable of submitting a budget that reduces deficits. The House and Senate are certainly capable of passing balanced budgets without a new "pay as you go" law. But then again, the purpose of the pay as you go law is not deficit reduction or balanced budgets, its propaganda, smoke and mirrors, and tying the hands of Republicans to enact tax cuts.

At any rate, it is clear that the loss of bluest of blue Massachusetts has not resulted in Obama learning a thing. That is a very dark cloud with a bright silver lining. It is horrifying for what it means Obama will attempt over the next 11 months, and yet it is gratifying for what it means the voting public will do in the 11th month.

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Karl Rove and Axle Grease

Last week in the Washington Post, Karl Rove was one of several individuals who took part in assessing the economy and what Obama should attempt to do in the coming year. This from Mr. Rove:

Congressional Democrats pushed through ineffectual legislation such as the stimulus that didn't produce the promised results.

They raised discretionary spending by 24 percent from President George W. Bush's last full-year budget and will run up more debt by October than Bush did in eight years.

They made a priority of the unpopular cap-and-trade energy tax while Americans were worried about jobs and the economy.

They squandered every opportunity for the bipartisanship President Obama promised in his campaign.

Then they ended the year with a pork-filled monstrosity of a health-care bill that's increasingly detested.

The solid support that Democrats enjoyed at the start of 2009 among independents and college-educated voters is gone: They and seniors have propelled the GOP to a nine-point lead in Rasmussen's generic ballot.

Congressional Democrats can't reverse their midterm fortunes by trying to pass itsy-bitsy pieces of insignificant but popular legislation. Voters will stay fixated on their existing mistakes. So Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should push for big things:: In for a penny, in for a pound. It would be hard to come up with less popular causes than they've already embraced. So find something that might redirect voter anger, especially if Republicans cooperate by failing to offer a positive alternative. Good luck: You made the mess.

This motivated David Axelrod to crawl out from under his slime encrusted rock and pen a response. It is breathtaking. This from Mr. Axlerod:

When the Bush administration left office, it handed President Obama a $1.3 trillion deficit -- and projected shortfalls of $8 trillion for the next decade.

Where does Axelrod come up with this? Was Bush President through the stimulus. When Obama took the oath of office, the deficit stood at $569 billion. You only get to $1.3 trillion near the end of Obama's first year in office, when you start adding in the massive, pork laden stimulus bill plus all of the rest of the profligate spending from Obama. .

To continue with Mr. Axelrod:

During eight years in office, the Bush administration passed two major tax cuts skewed to the wealthiest Americans, enacted a costly Medicare prescription-drug benefit and waged two wars, without paying for any of it.

To put the breathtaking scope of this irresponsibility in perspective, the Bush administration's swing from surpluses to deficits added more debt in its eight years than all the previous administrations in the history of our republic combined. And its spending spree is the unwelcome gift that keeps on giving: Going forward, these unpaid-for policies will continue to add trillions to our deficit.

Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't Obama elected because he claimed to be able to fix our economy? And even a year in, he is still blaming Bush for all current and future deficits? Sorry, Axlerod, but that one is far beyond it "use by" date. Besides, there is little more that Obama could be doing to hurt the business climate in America. Who will hire when looming in the backround are massive new taxes and costs from the threats of health care reform and cap and trade?

This fiscal irresponsibility -- and a laissez-faire attitude toward the excesses of the financial industry -- helped create the conditions for the deepest economic catastrophe since the Great Depression.

The worst thing about the Democrats holding both the Senate and the House is that the left has been able to continue the greatest myth of our time, that our financial meltdown was brought about "financial industry" excess rather than social engineering of Democrats - and in particular Bill Clinton, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd - since 1993. It is obscene.

The only greater travesty is watching the Dems supposedly conduct an inquiry into the causes of our financial meltdown while utterly refusing to even address the subprime crisis at the heart of the meltdown. The "Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission" is now meeting. Perhaps the biggest clue that this is a pro forma white wash is that it the Commission's report is slated to arrive on 15 Dec., "long after Congress and the Administration hope to pass the most far-reaching reform of financial laws since the 1930s." Isn't that breathtaking.

The WSJ has an article on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission discussing how it is aimed only at the finanical services industry while ignoring the Fed, Fannie and Freddie - and I would add Bill, Barney and Chris. As the author so cogently opines, this is like writing a history into the causes of the Civil War while "ignoring slavery."

Here are some more of Mr. Axelrod's mendacious musings:

Economists across the political spectrum agreed that to deal with this crisis and avoid a second Great Depression, the government had to make significant investments to keep our economy going and shore up our financial system.

That is why President Obama and Congress crafted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Despite Rove's assertion, it is widely accepted that the difficult but necessary steps Obama took have helped save our economy from an even deeper disaster.

The truth of course is that the stimulus was not a way to start regrowing the size of the economy. It was instead a means of keeping public and public union workers in their jobs overtopped with funding for the entire A to Z list of Democratic pork projects, a list that included such things as $16.1 million for saving endangered marsh mice in San Francisco, a hundred thousand to porn producers as part of an $80 million NEA grant, and $500,000 in a grant for disgraced Prof. Michael Mann to do more studies on the canard of global warming. As to the wealth creating engines of America, they were virtually ignored in the stimulus. Of the 787 billion stimulus, all of 2.6% was dedicated to helping small businesses through the SBA, and only another 10% aimed at construction and infrastructure. When Obama told the nation that it would keep unemployment - now at Depression levels of 17.3% in real terms - under 8%, he was accurate in one sense. Public union employees are doing outstandingly well. It is the rest of America, the one's that produce the wealth that allows public employees to get paid, that are suffering a sucking chest wound. But that house of cards is about to come to a screeching hault also as the gravy train for the states runs out and the private sector, having been bled dry and threatened with ever greater taxes and regulations by Team Obama, cannot provide the tax funds necessary to keep the public sector afloat.

To continue with Mr. Axelrod:

. . . we also recognize that we need to address the long legacy of overspending in Washington. That is why, shortly after taking office, Obama instructed his agency heads to go through the budget page by page, line by line, to eliminate what we don't need to help pay for what we do.

As a start, the president proposed billions of dollars in cuts, and he'll continue to fight for them and others in the upcoming budget. An analysis by the Washington Times concluded that in this first year, Obama had been more successful in getting his proposed cuts through Congress than his predecessor was in any of his eight years in office.

How hard is it to give up a little pork when you are bringing in a whole herd of swine? Just as a reminder, this is what Axlerod is trumpeting, from Reuters in May, 2008:

The proposals to trim 121 programs identified by the White House as wasteful or unnecessary amounted to only a half of 1 percent of the $3.55 trillion budget that Obama has submitted for the fiscal year that begins in October.

Of the $17 billion in budget savings the White House identified, about half were in the defense budget.

That Axelrod is trumping that as proof of Obama's fiscal responsibility . . . hmmm, the words offensive and disingenuous just are far too mild to do it justice. But then of course, there is the claim that Obama is being financially responsible by relying on the CBO report to prove that health care reform will not only be budget neutral, but will reduce the budget. This from Axelrod:

And even as Obama has pursued landmark health insurance reforms that will hold the insurance industry accountable and expand coverage to working Americans, he has insisted from the beginning that any reform legislation must not add to the federal deficit and must help reduce it over time. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the legislation making its way through Congress upholds this principle. . . ..

Does Obama think that a majority of Americans are being fooled by this CBO mantra? Does Obama think that it hasn't filtered out that health care legislation he has proposed has as much a chance as being deficit neutral as a high school football team has of going to the superbowl. Obama's problem, and by extension Axelrod's, is that they have mistakenly conflated the ignorance of Americans with stupidity. The mere fact that the majority of Americans were willing to swallow the Obama-aid in 2008 does not mean that they close their eyes to reality thereafter. What is happening in Massachussets right now ought to be sufficient proof.

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Karl Rove On Dr. Jekyll & President Hyde

The pronouncements of Candidate Obama are glaringly inconsistent with the actions of President Obama. Karl Rove opines on that today, noting that the inconsistency is prevelant in both the sphere of national security and domestic policy - with the former being welcome, the latter being unwelcome, and the sum of the whole telling us some troubling things about President Obama.

Karl Rove begins his article noting with approval that, in contravention to all of his heated and moralizing rhetoric excoriating President Bush over the War on Terror during the campaign, President Obama has essentially adopted the Bush blueprint for the war on terror wholesale. I covered this in detail in a post below, "Candidate Obama versus President Obama in the War on Terror." As Rove notes:

These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.

Rove then moves onto the realm of domestic policy:

. . . We are also seeing Mr. Obama reverse himself on the domestic front, but this time in a manner that will do more harm than good.

Mr. Obama campaigned on "responsible fiscal policies," arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the "rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy." In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to "go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work." Even now, he says he'll "cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office" and is "rooting out waste and abuse" in the budget.

However, Mr. Obama's fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government's share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.

On health care, Mr. Obama's election ads decried "government-run health care" as "extreme," saying it would lead to "higher costs." Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, "It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system."

Making adjustments in office is one thing. Constantly governing in direct opposition to what you said as a candidate is something else. Mr. Obama's flip-flops on national security have been wise; on the domestic front, they have been harmful.

In both cases, though, we have learned something about Mr. Obama. What animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called "the projection of appealing images." All politicians want to project an appealing image. What Mr. McDonald warned against is focusing on this so much that an appealing image "becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself." Such an approach can work in a campaign, as Mr. Obama discovered. But it can also complicate life once elected, as he is finding out.

Mr. Obama's appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America's security interests.

Mr. Obama ran hard to the center on economic issues to win the general election. He has since discovered his campaign commitments were obstacles to ramming through the most ideologically liberal economic agenda since the Great Society.

Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public. Neither option is particularly encouraging. America now has a president quite different from the person who advertised himself for the job last year. Over time, those things can catch up to a politician.

Read the enitre article. Perhaps if MSM had actually vetted this deeply disingenuous man, American's may have had sufficient knowledge to make an educated decision for whom pull the lever last November. Instead, many American's pulled the lever for an image that has turned out to be far more shadow than substance. And if the polls are correct, it would seem that many are finding this reality ever more troubling. Caveat Emptor indeed.

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Democratic Convention Day 1

A pretty dull night over all. I was looking forward to listening to Jimmy Carter open the festivities and speak about Obama serving out Jimmy's second term, but the DNC wisely pulled the plug on that. The only thing better would have been having Rev. Wright giving the opening prayer - but he is being held by David Axelrod bound and gagged deep in the jungles of Ghana with labels plastered all over his body saying "Do Not Release Until December 2008."

Pelosi spoke - and no one paid any attention. Heh. You couldn't hear her over the chatter from the floor. It was good to see Ted Kennedy make an appearance also. He looked remarkably healthy and gave a stump speech that was vintage Kennedy. We may have been given a hint of how dire is his prognosis when he promised to be at the January swearing in.

The main focus of the night was the speech by Michelle Obama, Barack's bitter half. She gave a very well rehearsed speech that was well delivered and, I thought, a good speech. It checked all the boxes and sounded the utopian hope and change themes. At least it was positive and did no harm. Karl Rove gave it a failing mark for being too much a stump speech and not enough an introduction into she and her husband.

Michelle Malkin has both the first draft of Michelle Obama's speech (heh) and the text of the actual speech.

The real fun was apparently outside of the Convention where the nations breakfast people - assorted nuts and flakes - gathered en masse. Gateway Pundit has all the stories, including:

- An anarchist riot outside the Sheraton Hotel resulting in sixteen arrests.

- Michelle Malkin getting chased about by screaming lefties.

- A Soros funded group has a bus containing a shrine to the evils of Bush and a film showing Americans being attacked by roadside bombs in Iraq.

- Midwest Jim enjoys the accomodations made available to our guests at Club Gitmo, compliments of Amnesty International.

- The People's Press Collective has video highlights of some of the demostrations. You will find some friendly faces in the crowd, including Cindy Sheehan and Ward Churchill.

Stay tuned tomorrow - its PUMA day.

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Rove Unimpressed

Karl Rove has an interesting article in the WSJ discussing the strengths and weaknesses of Obama's campaign and using the term "chameleon" to describe the speed and volume at which Obama is changing positions. There is also an interesting post discussing Obama's fund raising problems at The Next Right, a new blog by Republican former Republican activists Jon Henke, Patrick Ruffini and Soren Dayton aimed at helping reform the Republican Party and move it back to its conservative roots.
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This from Mr. Rove writing in the WSJ, gives us an insight into the organization of national political campaigns, as well as the strengh and weakness of the Obama's organizations and practices. The strength he finds is that Obama has tried to copy the Rove playbook for a Presidential campaign. The weaknesses are that they have not copied the whole playbook and the chameleon like quality of the candidate:

. . . Barack Obama's manager admitted to the New York Times that he wanted an "army of persuasion" modeled explicitly on the massive Bush neighbor-to-neighbor "Victory Committee" of '00 and '04. Those efforts deployed millions of volunteers to register, persuade and get-out-the-vote.

Sen. Obama's organizational emphasis wisely avoids the Democratic mistake of 2000, when Donna Brazille's plea for a stronger grassroots focus was ignored by the Gore high command. It also avoids the mistake of 2004, when Democrats outsourced their ground game to George Soros's 527 organizations. The latter effort paid at least $76 million to more than 45,000 canvassers – many hired from temp agencies – to register and turn out voters. It was the wrong model: Undecideds are more likely to be influenced by those in their social network than an anonymous, low-wage campaign worker.

Like Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama has harnessed the Internet for persuasion, communication and self-directed organization. A Bush campaign secret weapon in 2004 was nearly 7.5 million email addresses of supporters, 1.5 million of them volunteers. Some volunteers ran "virtual precincts," using the Web to register, persuade and organize family and friends around the country. Technology has opened even more possibilities for Mr. Obama today.

The Obama campaign is trying to catch up with the GOP's "microtargeting" program, which uses powerful analytical tools and extensive household consumer information to focus on prospects for conversion and extra turnout help. Another Obama adaptation of a 2004 Bush campaign technique is a stepped-up, rapid response effort. Charges do not go unanswered, the campaign stays relentlessly on the offense, using every channel of communication.

The Obama campaign has also copied the Bush strategy of broadening the general election map. In 2000, the Bush effort targeted not just the traditional battlegrounds, but also West Virginia (last won by the GOP in an open race for the presidency in 1928), Tennessee (Al Gore's home), Arkansas (Bill Clinton's home), Washington and Oregon.

Hoping for a breakthrough somewhere, Mr. Obama also wants to force John McCain to play defense. So in addition to traditional battleground states, he's running TV ads and organizing in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana, Nebraska, Montana, Alaska and North Dakota. And where Mr. Bush targeted Latinos, African-Americans, Jews, Catholics and education voters to narrow Democratic margins, Mr. Obama is going after evangelicals, veterans and values voters with ads and outreach to trim the GOP's margin.

There are problems, however. Mr. Obama's people admit they want to sucker Mr. McCain into spending money. To be successful, a bluff must be credible. In places like Nebraska and North Dakota, Mr. Obama can't rely on local issues – like Mr. Bush did with coal in West Virginia in 2000 – to unexpectedly win a critical state. Organization alone won't suffice. And putting Obama dollars into Texas, for example, to help win five state House seats may simply cause Texan Republicans – not Mr. McCain – to raise money and work harder to counter.

Democrats don't have the same large volunteer pool the GOP does with its Federated GOP Women, College and Young Republicans, and local party committees. In the primaries, Mr. Obama instead moved hordes of volunteers from state to state. It was a brilliant tactic, but Nov. 4 is different. The volunteers adequate for primaries held over five months will simply not be enough to compete in 51 separate elections (all 50 states plus the District of Columbia) all on one day.

Mr. Obama's biggest problem is . . . substance. . . Mr. Bush won the general election on the same themes and positions as in the primaries, including compassionate conservatism, the faith-based initiative, tax cuts and Social Security reform. There was no repudiation of past positions, no chameleon-like shifts in positions.

. . . In the primary, Mr. Obama supported pulling out of Iraq within 16 months, called the D.C. gun ban constitutional, backed the subjection of telecom companies to expensive lawsuits for cooperating in the terror surveillance program, opposed welfare reform, pledged to renegotiate Nafta, disavowed free trade and was strongly against the death penalty in all cases. But in the past few weeks, Mr. Obama has reversed course on all of these, discarding fringe liberal views for relentlessly centrist positions. He also flip-flopped on accepting public financing and condemning negative ads from third party groups, like unions.

. . . Mr. Obama is assuming such dramatic reversals will somehow avoid voter scrutiny. But people are watching closely, and by setting a world indoor record for jettisoning past positions, Mr. Obama may be risking his reputation for truthfulness. A candidate's credibility, once lost, is very hard to restore, regardless of how fine an organization he has built.

Read the entire article. Also an interesting read, At The Next Right, Sean Oxendine wonders whether Obama is about to run into fund raising problems.

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A Revisionist Retrospective

Obama appears to be unprincipled and disingenuous individual who refuses to take personal responsiblity. His greatest skills are his oratory and his ability to dance around tough questions with the liquid grace of a Bill Clinton at the top of his form. Karl Rove serves to provide us with a reminder of these facts today as he takes us on a guided tour of Obama's serial revisionism.
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This today from Karl Rove in the WSJ:

. . . [Obama] instinctively resorts to parsing, evasions and misdirection. The saga over Rev. Jeremiah Wright is Exhibit A. In just 62 days, Americans were treated to eight different explanations.

First, on Feb. 25, Mr. Obama downplayed Rev. Wright's divisiveness, saying he was "like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with." A week later, Mr. Obama insisted, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial," suggesting that Rev. Wright was criticized because "he was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that."

The issue exploded on March 13, when ABC showed excerpts from Rev. Wright's sermons. Mr. Obama's spokesman said the senator "deeply disagrees" with Rev. Wright's statements, but "now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."

The next day, Mr. Obama offered a fourth defense: "The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation." Mr. Obama also told the Chicago Tribune, "In fairness to him, this was sort of a greatest hits. They basically culled five or six sermons out of 30 years of preaching."

Then, four days later, in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama finally repudiated Rev. Wright's comments, saying they "denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation." But Mr. Obama went on to say, "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother. . . ."

Ten days later, Mr. Obama said if Rev. Wright had not retired as Trinity's pastor, and "had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended . . . then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church." (Never mind that Rev. Wright had made no such acknowledgment.)

On April 28, at the National Press Club, Rev. Wright re-emerged – not to apologize but to repeat some of his most offensive lines. This provoked an eighth defense: "[W]hatever relationship I had with Rev. Wright has changed, as a consequence of this. I don't think that he showed much concern for me. More importantly, I don't think he showed much concern for what we are trying to do in this campaign . . . ." Self-interest is a powerful, but not noble, sentiment in politics.

The Rev. Wright affair is just one instance where the Illinois senator has said something wrong or offensive, and then offered shifting explanations for his views. Consider flag pins.

Mr. Obama told an Iowa radio station last October he didn't wear an American flag lapel pin because, after 9/11, it had "became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues . . . ." His campaign issued a statement that "Senator Obama believes that being a patriot is about more than a symbol." To highlight his own moral superiority, he denigrated the patriotism of those who wore a flag.

Yet by April, campaigning in culturally conservative Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama was blaming others for the controversy he'd created, claiming, "I have never said that I don't wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins. This is the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and, once again, distracts us . . . ." A month later Mr. Obama was once again wearing a pin, saying "Sometimes I wear it, sometimes I don't."

The Obama revision tour has been seen elsewhere. Last July, Mr. Obama pledged to meet personally and without precondition, during his first year, the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. Criticized afterwards, he made his pledge more explicitly, naming Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Venezuela strongman Hugo Chávez as leaders he would grace with first-year visits.

By October, Mr. Obama was backpedaling, talking about needing "some progress or some indication of good faith," and by April, "sufficient preparation." It got so bad his foreign policy advisers were (falsely) denying he'd ever said he'd meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad – even as he still defended his original pledge to have meetings without precondition.

The list goes on. Mr. Obama's problem is a campaign that's personality-driven rather than idea-driven. Thus incidents calling into question his persona and character can have especially devastating consequences. . .

Read the entire post.

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"Fredo" McClellan

It is one thing to turn on your friends and mentors on the basis of principal. Scott McClellan has not done that. In reading of Scott McClellan's new book and its contents, I am reminded of nothing so strongly as Fredo Corleone in the Godfather - the weak, incompetent and disloyal brother who turned on his family to build himself up and curry favor with those who stood opposed to his family. I think that the apt analogy for the weak, largely incompetent and supremely disloyal Mr. McClellan. Karl Rove responds on video here. Dave in Boca adds his own cogent thoughts. Update: And similar thoughts at Powerline.

My parting advice to McClellan, don't accept any offers to go fishing.

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Rove & Hanson Evaluate The Dem Nominees

Karl Rove takes note of the tremendous weaknesses of both Hillary and Clinton, while Victor David Hanson thinks he detects buyers remorse as the Democrats get ready to replay disasters past.

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Karl Rove, writing in the WSJ, takes the measure of both wounded candidates still vieing for the Democratic nomination:

. . . The Democratic Party has two weakened candidates. Mrs. Clinton started as a deeply flawed candidate: the palpable and unpleasant sense of entitlement, the absence of a clear and optimistic message, the grating personality impatient to be done with the little people and overly eager for a return to power, real power, the phoniness and the exaggerations. These problems have not diminished over the long months of the contest. They have grown. She started out with the highest negatives of any major candidate in an open race for the presidency and things have only gotten worse.

And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural American are "bitter" and therefore "cling" to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia? Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason.

His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making.

Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.

Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their too-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.

But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.

Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.

Read the entire article. Victor David Hanson, writing at the NRO, sees this year as a replay of the McGovern debacle:

. . . The Democrats are tottering at the edge of the abyss. They are about to nominate someone who cannot win, despite vastly out-spending his opponent, any of the key large states . . . that will determine the fall election. And yet not to nominate him will cause the sort of implosion they saw in 1968 or the sort of mess we saw in November 2000.

Hillary won't quit, since she knows that Obama, when pressure mounts, is starting to show a weird sort of petulance, . . .

They won't be able to force Hillary out since she still has strong arguments — the popular vote may end up dead even, or even in her favor; while he won caucuses and out-of-play states, she won the critical fall battlegrounds — and by plebiscites; she is the more experienced and more likely to run a steady national campaign; she wins the Reagan Democrats that will determine the fall election; and by other, more logical nomination rules (like the Republicans' fewer caucuses, winner-take-all elections) she would have already wrapped it up. There seems something unfair, after all, for someone to win these mega-states and end up only with a few extra delegates for the effort. The more this drags out, the more Obama and Hillary get nastier and more estranged from each other — at precisely the time one must take the VP nomination to unite the party.

On the plus side, Hillary is showing a scrappy, tough blue-collar talent that is critical for November — but apparently it will be all for naught, or worse, cause lots of these Middle America "clingers" to go over to McCain.

More and more, McCain will want to run against Obama and his far weaker coalition of elite whites, African-Americans, students — and closets of skeletons. More and more, we will start to see the buyer's remorse of midsummer 1972. . . .

Read the entire post.

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Aim For The Throat, Damn It

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) runs the gambit in his assessments concerning Barack Obama. He gets it exactly right on the issues that Obama pulling us out of Iraq would be a catastrophe and that Obama, right now, is the favored candidate of al Qaeda and other assorted Middle East radicals. Great points central to the election - so time to shut up and let Obama try to talk his way around this one.

If only. Instead, Rep. King takes out his pistol, aims it at his foot, and proceeds to blasting away. Rep. King goes on to argue that Obama's middle name and his Kenyan heritage are reasons not to vote for him. Rep. King is just royally stupid. Obama's campaign should have been responding to King's critical first points. Instead, Obama's campaign was ignoring the substance and asking McCain to disassociate himself from all that Rep. King had said.

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Representative Steve King of Iowa gave an interview today. And he was dead on point:

"I will tell you that, if [Obama] is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror."

King thinks radical Islamists will say the United States has capitulated because the Obama administration would be pulling troops out of any conflict associated with al-Qaida.

This is beyond question. And no less a person than the West's premier Orientalist, Professor Bernard Lewis, has delivered warning of the profound, dire and lasting reprucussions if we are seen as weak and come to be viewed as conceding victory to al Qaeda by withdrawing from Iraq. And there is simply no way around the fact that this is precisely how an Obama directed withdraw from Iraq would be played. It is Obama's greatest weakness. And it is why his arguments about leaving Iraq all deceptively center on a "wrong decision" in 2003, not the reality of 2008 and the future ramifications of a withdrawal.

And King is absolutely right that Obama's Iraq policy, and his Iran policy for that matter, make Obama the favored candidate of radical Islamists everywhere. Gateway Pundit notes: "The "Axis of Evil" all rejoiced when the antiwar Democrats took Congress in 2006.The "Axis of Evil" was ecstatic! They were celebrating: In Syria; In Iran; By Al Qaeda in Iraq; By Hugo Chavez in Venezuela; In North Korea; Even Cuba. They’ll be dancing in the streets if Obama- or Hillary- win the White House in 2008, too." And as Gateway Pundit has catalogued in other posts, Obama already has the Iran endorsement sewn up this time around, not mention the FARC endorsement.

Those are both incredibly powerful arguments. Those are both valid arguments that we need to make the center of debate.

What is not valid are King's other arguments, both stated and implied:

"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father might have been," he said. "I'll just say this: When you think about the option of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?"

. . . "his middle name (Hussein) does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict."

Folks, if this campaign becomes about Barack Hussein Obama's middle name or his ethnicity rather than his insane politics and his lack of veracity, we lose. Race - and gender - matter in this campaign and if the right does anything that smacks of racial or gender politics, they are going to get savaged by the left wing press.

McCain - and Karl Rove - have it exactly right on this. The word Hussein used in any reference to Obama is verbotten. And if the language "all men are created equal" has any meaning, so is any reference to Obama's lineage as a disqualifying factor. And Rick Moran is dead on point, that all this "Obama is a Muslim crap" needs to stop now.

Trying to target the Obamamessiah on the basis of a name given to him by his parents over four decades ago and which tells us nothing about how Obama will govern is a wholly unnecessary cheap shot, it will be portrayed as racism, and it may well cost the right the election if it keeps getting repeated. Targeting Obama because of his ethnicity will accomplish the same result, just exponentially faster. Moreover, and more importantly, both are morally wrong in my book.

Both the Obama and the Clinton candidacies provide vehicles to establish our national bona fides as having put the racial, gender and ethnic divides largely behind us on a national level. Their campaigns are historic and need to be treated with honor and respect. The way to accomplish that is to keep this election wholly about issues - not cheap shots, not bias - and then to vote on the issues. The flip side to that is that many on the left are going to be casting their vote based on "white liberal guilt." I suspect that there are a lot of voters in the middle who might be convinced that using liberal guilt as a basis for making their choice will be justified if they perceive the right as validating the race, gender, or any other victim card this election.

Obama's policies provide a target rich environment. Obama's electoral history provides a target rich environment. Obama's associations provide a target rich environment. Obama has some real problems with telling the truth to the American public and he is being less than forthcoming in answering questions. With this plethora of targets, why get penalized for hitting below the belt when you can go straight for the jugular?

Update: Indeed, you can leave the cheap shotting to the NYT. They are the best weapon we have in the far left camp:

- On the Campaign Trail, Few Mentions of McCain’s Bout With Melanoma

- McCain Grows Testy on Question About ’04 and Kerry Partnership

- For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk

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Interesting News & Posts - 22 February 2008

The interesting news and posts of the day, below the fold.











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Art: St. George & The Dragon, Vittore Carpaccio, 1516

Before getting to the posts that have occupied the bulk of bandwith of late – comments on the NYT hitpiece on McCain and discussions of various aspects of Obamamania – here are several fine posts that bucked the trend:

At Sigmund, Carl and Alfred are some of the funniest posts I have read in a donkey’s age. First up, politically named golf shots. My favorite, the Ted Kennedy slice. It is an off course shot that doesn’t "quite make it over the water." And don’t miss the 25 Strangest College Courses.

And while on humor, TNOY has the top 9 reasons Fidel Castro decided to resign. My favorite, he is moving to America and running for president on the Democratic ticket to offer voters a more moderate choice.

Do you get the feeling he’s really enjoying himself? He should be. Ignored in the American press, the President who has done more for Africa than any of his predecessors is basking in approval and enjoying the fun.

Is the EU open and democratic? An Englishman’s Castle has Exhibit A.

Is a disarmed world a more violent world. Eric at Classical Values thinks so, as do I.

Oh Beautiful, for Spacious Skies, for Standard Missile 3's – a great post on the satellite shoot-down at Publius Pundit.

Soccer Dad tells us that the majority of Israeli Arabs support serving in Israel’s National Service Program. This says some very positive things about their political identity.

The left want us to believe there is nothing to fear but "fear itself." Talk about your jihadist with a real sense of irony . . .

Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing. It is what allows us to consider ideas, to hear reports of actions, and to identify reality. No wonder the Islamists do not care for it in the U.S. . . . And it would appear that the Islamist idea of free speech is rather one sided. If you want to know more about what is taught in Saudi / Salafi schools, see here.

This is pretty amazing. How to eliminate in the way of Allah. One wonders if the Koran says anything about the permissibility of using two ply.

So is black really a slimming color?

At the American Digest, a fascinating juxtaposition on marketing religion, secular and christian.

The NYT Hit Piece on John McCain

My take on the NYT hit piece that would not pass the journalistic standards of the National Enquirer.

An exceptional piece on the lobbyist influence from Tom MacGuire at Just One Minute

Gateway Pundit: Conservatives, including Rush, rally around McCain after NYT attack.

Poweline: The NYT upholds its standards.

Jules Crittenden: Does his usual humorous commentary along with a roll up that includes lefties diving into the deep end.

Don Surber: Circling the Wagons around McCain.

And the NYT reporters on the by-line seem to be circling the wagons themselves.

The NYT article is now at the center of a McCain fund raising pitch.

From Big Lizards, the AP runs a parallel smear portraying Cindy McCain as standing by her man, despite the pain of his Clintonesque misdeeds

Laer ponders the timing of the release and the lack of any articles on several questionable associations in Obama’s past. I am waiting for the article on the $10 million Obama has taken in donations from lobbyists.

Obamimania:

Karl Rove in the WSJ flays Obama’s policy positions in light of his rhetoric.

From Jules Crittenden, a cult member begins deprogramming. And will Barack be our first affirmative action President?

From PJM: Obama Unboud – The Man Behind The Myth; Assessing Obama’s Foreign Policy; the end of the Obama Honeymoon.

From Victor David Hanson – the Ivy League Populism.

Obama’s railing against lobbyists is hypocritical smoke. From Don Surber: Obama received $9,819,390 from lawyers and lobbyists. McCain $2,980,037.

From the Belemont Club: Is Obama the modern day McGovern simply awaiting his fall?

Fausta projects the results of Obama’s high tax policy by looking to Britain’s experience.

From Robert Samuelson: "The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the media -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- have treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan.

From JustOneMinute, Obama’s staffers spin Obama’s more ridiculous foreign policy obaminations after McCain criticism.

Kudlow at Money Politics looks at Pro-Business McCain vs. Populist Hill-Bama.

Dr. Sanity has a brilliant essay on identity politics and attempting to expiate racism by making racially motivated decisions.

The Whited Sepulchre attends an Obama rally – and is moved on a visceral level, even though his rational mind appears to still be intact. He remains unchanged.

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