Obama's Secular Revival & Charles Krauthammer et. al.

Obamamania is sweeping the secular left in the form of a messianic cult. Here is a round-up and some thoughts.

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Charles Krauthammer weighs in today on the hopemongerer in chief:

There's no better path to success than getting people to buy a free commodity. Like the genius who figured out how to get people to pay for water: bottle it. . . .

And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope. To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.

This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity -- salvation -- for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a "salvational fervor" and "idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria."

"We are the hope of the future," sayeth Obama. We can "remake this world as it should be." Believe in me and I shall redeem not just you but your country -- nay, we can become "a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest."

. . . Interestingly, Obama has been able to win these electoral victories and dazzle crowds in one new jurisdiction after another, even as his mesmeric power has begun to arouse skepticism and misgivings among the mainstream media.

ABC's Jake Tapper notes the "Helter-Skelter cult-ish qualities" of "Obama worshipers," what Joel Stein of the Los Angeles Times calls "the Cult of Obama." Obama's Super Tuesday victory speech was a classic of the genre. Its effect was electric, eliciting a rhythmic fervor in the audience -- to such rhetorical nonsense as "We are the ones we've been waiting for. (Cheers, applause.) We are the change that we seek."

That was too much for Time's Joe Klein. "There was something just a wee bit creepy about the mass messianism," he wrote. "The message is becoming dangerously self-referential. The Obama campaign all too often is about how wonderful the Obama campaign is."

You might dismiss as hyperbole the complaint by the New York Times's Paul Krugman that "the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality." Until you hear Chris Matthews, who no longer has the excuse of youth, react to Obama's Potomac primary victory speech with "My, I felt this thrill going up my leg." When his MSNBC co-hosts tried to bail him out, he refused to recant. Not surprising for an acolyte who said that Obama "comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament." . . .

. . . Obama has an astonishingly empty paper trail. He's going around issuing promissory notes on the future that he can't possibly redeem. Promises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Promises to transcend the conundrums of entitlement reform that require real and painful trade-offs and that have eluded solution for a generation. Promises to fund his other promises by a rapid withdrawal from an unpopular war -- with the hope, I suppose, that the (presumed) resulting increase in American prestige would compensate for the chaos to follow.

Democrats are worried that the Obama spell will break between the time of his nomination and the time of the election, and deny them the White House. My guess is that he can maintain the spell just past Inauguration Day. After which will come the awakening. It will be rude.

Read the entire article. You can also find some more thoughts on the nature of the cult of Obama:

Soccer Dad - Hope is Like Bottled Water

American Thinker - Obama's Politics of Collective Redemption

If you wish to see just how truly cultish and messianic the Obama campaign is becoming, do read through the thread on this forum discussing Obama and why the individuals on that site are for him.

Bookworm Room has a thoughtful post on this messianic effect Obama is having on his crowds:

I am not saying that Obama is Hitler. I am saying, however, that both his speaking style and the audience reaction to that style are typical of the connection between a demagogue and his audience. It’s not new, it’s been around for a while, but in an age of inarticulate politicians, we’re unused to it and have no resistance.

(A little historical note: my father, who escaped Hitler’s Germany in 1935, heard Hitler speak at a public rally. And my father, who was Jewish and therefore unlikely to be swayed by Hitler’s words, noticed exactly what Hillary’s friend said: His speeches were commonplace. It was his connection with his audience that was out of the ordinary.)

Read the entire post. She also sites to article by Daniel Henninger, deconstructing Obama's message and speaking style, and Dean Barnett, at the Weekly Standard, who compares the Obamamania effect of a full on teleprompter driven speech with the much less elevating permformance Obama gives when off the teleprompter.

As to the point Bookwormroom makes in her first paragraph, at the American Thinker blog, one individual wrote:

. . . Obama's speeches remind me of the sermons given by a preacher at one of those mega churches. They give feel good sermons using words like change and hope. Now a lot of conservatives go to church on a regular basis and they hear oratory like Obama gives all the time and they wonder what all the fuss is about. A lot of liberals on the other hand don't go to church and they have never heard "sermons" like this before and it really affects them emotionally. . . .

Read the entire article.

Part of the problem in dealing with Obama - a large part actually - is that he is an "identity politics" candidate. Thus, to criticize him or question him on any grounds whatsoever is to be challenged by his acolytes as an unfair attack on his identity.

Cheat Seeking Missiles - The Most Ridiculous Story of 2008? Part 2

American Thinker - The Audacity of Questioning Obama's Commitment to Israel

I find myself more than a bit concerned at Krauthammer's prediction. Everything about Obama - from his plan to withdraw from Iraq, take pressure off Iran and engage in talks, his economic ideas, etc. - seem a disaster in the making. There are several people out there who seem to think the Obama cult cannot survive the reality of a campaign against McCain. I am nowhere near as sanguine on that issue. I think that the realities of that campaign would weigh not at all on the secular converts to the religion of Obama. He will outraise McCain by tons of cash, his meaningless speeches will be saturating television and radio in one minute sound bites, and I think there is a real chance McCain could lose the coming election to Obama.

Some people disagree with me, and make very reasonable arguments in the process. For example, you can see Richard Baehr at American Thinker, who has some contrary thoughts on how this will play out. Rick Moran thinks that Obamimania is more like the Crusades than a cult, and that it can be successfully challenged. Big Lizards thinks that the Obama campaign will be unable to compete with the reality of McCain, writing in How the Democrats Will Attack McCain... and Fail Miserably.

There is some additional information being posted dealing with Obamanomics. WaPo tells us today that Clinton and Obama share a similar economic vision. Given Clinton's radical economic views, I find that distressing. The NY Post discusses the questionable tax policies Obama is advocating. PJM writes on Obama's hard left socialist economic tendencies. Rick Moran has an excellent post out on both Clinton and Obama's health care proposals - Mandate me, baby. And The QandO Blog has an interesting post on Obama, Exxon Mobil, Economics and Populism.

Update: And see this very good round-up at Right Truth, that includes a look at relative tax rates proposed by the candidates.

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Of John McCain, Kos Coulter and the Goldwater Myth

A vociferous element of the Republican Party, epitomized by Ann Coulter, would destroy the Republican Party rather than see McCain become president. It seems more of a tantrum displaying the irrationality I had thought was only associated with the far left. It is, I believe, incredibly foolish.

McCain was not my first choice for the Republican nomination. No matter. He will be the Republican nominee. I will support him wholeheartedly.

To say that I am appalled by the reaction on the conservative side with the reaction to John McCain being the likely nominee would be understatement. As a threshold matter, much of what I am hearing is a distortion of McCain’s record.

On the single most important issue we face, national security, no one questions McCain’s credentials. McCain was correct in his calls for an increase in troop strength far before 2007. He also supported Iraq and the surge when it appeared that it would end his Presidential bid. That is principle, folks. Most politicians do not have it. If McCain is in the White House, we stand a chance to win the war against terror. Most politicians, Republican’s included, would have folded up in Iraq in 2006 in order to win the Presidency.

On the economy, McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts not because he was against tax cuts, but because he wanted concomitant spending cuts. That is called fiscal responsibility. That is also far more Reganesque than anything we ever got from Bush. Bush has spent like a drunken Democrat, along with the rest of the Republicans in Congress. If he had imposed some fiscal discipline, Republicans may well not have lost the Congress in 2006. Moreover, McCain promises to end earmarks.

On trade, McCain is the single strongest advocate of all the candidates for free trade.

On subsidies, McCain went to Iowa and said it was time to end farm and ethanol subsidies. That’s honesty. That is integrity. That is precisely correct.

On immigration, McCain’s proposal was . . . Reganesque. Don’t claim McCain is not a conservative for proposing this plan. It may be inappropriate for a host of reasons, but so is the frothing of the mouth because McCain proposed it and then claiming him a traitor. Christ, get a grip.

McCain Feingold – McCain made a mistake on this one. He has, as I recall, admitted as much. Get over it.

McCain Lieberman – Someone need to get beat McCain over the head with a two by four on this one.

The gang of fourteen – Get over this one. McCain can reach across the aisle. We got most of what conservatives wanted out of it and we did not create a scenario that could later come back to haunt Republicans in a big way.

Supreme Court Judges - The primary manner through which the socialist left has pursued their agenda over the past several decades is through the courts. In just the past two years, liberal justices have competely gutted the Fifth Amendment right limiting the government's ability to take private property. A few years before that, the liberal justices began looking to the modern laws of other countries to decide how to interpret the Constitution. Both are an incredible travesty. With that in mind, do you want more Scalias or more Ginsbergs. In the end, this may be as important as the issue of national security in whether to support McCain.

What I am hearing now – this utter refusal to support McCain, is a temper tantrum worthy of the far left. Indeed, some, such as Ann “Kos” Coulter, threaten to campaign against McCain. Is she taking a page from Kos and Ned Lamont. That was a real victory, wasn't it. Likewise, the plan to sabotage McCain’s run for the Presidency in order to remake the Republican party into some sort of purist Conservative heaven is dangerous fantasy indeed. The belief that we are reliving the Goldwater years is a myth. Nixon followed Goldwater – and took us out of Vietnam in the name of “surrender with honor” or something like that. He imposed price controls. He was as far from a conservative as you can get.

The belief that if we keep out McCain now and let either Hillary or Obama have at it for four years, that we can then run a “true” conservative as a savior, much as what happened with Carter and Regan, misses a very important point. One, there is no Regan on the horizon. Two, we are still paying for Jimmy Carter's presidency, and the price will likely outlive us. Carter allowed Islamic fundamentalism to take hold by allowing Iran to fall to Khomenei. An Obama or Clinton could well undo the gains we have made against this scourge and, indeed, a precipitous withdraw from Iraq could make it far worse. McCain will not make that mistake. But if a Democratic President does, we will greatly compound the problems our nation must face.

The last thing we need is another middle class entitlement program. The history is that such programs are difficult in the extreme to get rid of once in place. How about trying to unseat Hillary after Hillarycare is in place.

I apologize for the rambling on this one. This is all stream of consciousness under a time crunch at the moment. But regardless, the point is that this outpouring of hatred towards McCain is largely unwarranted and problematic in the extreme. The Republican movement is more than just people who want all illegal immigrants boxed up and sent home yesterday. To the extent some of us would establish a litmus test, we may find the pure conservative Republican party at the end of that road to be very small indeed - and wholly irrelevant.

Update: Other bloggers or articles drawing similar conclusions include:

Daniel Henninger in the WSJ

Powerline

Hugh Hewitt

Dr. Sanity

Victor David Hanson.

Soccer Dad - Campaign Consultant Kang Speaks

The Glittering Eye - The Anti-McCain Republicans

Big Lizards - Why Should We Care Whether Hillary or McCain Wins?

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