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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Fisking Obama's latest attack on the GOP

From a short report, mostly comprising direct quotations, at Politico.com:

President Barack Obama chided Republicans for criticizing his agenda without being able to name priorities of their own.

“The Republican Party right now hasn’t sort of figured out what it’s for,” Obama said during a Monday interview with regional press, according to a transcript posted Tuesday by the Louisville Courier-Journal.

“As a proxy, they’ve just decided, ‘We’re going to be against whatever the other side is for,’” he said....

If one ignores the Obama Campaign's rhetoric and the Obama Administration's rhetoric, and instead focuses on the Obama Administration's actual domestic proposals and actions, then without any doubt, the simplest, most consistent, most principled, and most conservative approach any Republican leader, state or federal, can have taken since the Obama inauguration has been to oppose the Obama adminstration. There may be a few exceptions, but they're trivial. The best way to get things right as a conservative on matters of domestic policy, in other words, has been to presume that Obama is absolutely wrong in every respect, and vote against him. When the leaders of our country are marching us off a fiscal cliff, then simply being against what they're proposing is indeed an adequately comprehensive political philosophy, at least until we've backed away from the cliff.

“What you’ve seen is the Republican Party trying to position themselves as fiscally conservative after eight years of being in power and not being particularly fiscally conservative,” Obama said.

“I understand their efforts to brand themselves in that fashion. I just want to make sure that when it comes to solving this current economic crisis that we don't get so caught up in short-term politics that we're missing the big picture.”

Oh yes, by all means, let's not miss the big picture (h/t InstaPundit):

Deficit

That "big picture" — which itself is incredibly generous to Obama, since only fools and idiots (or members of the Congressional Budget Office) can give any credence at all to the notion that once Congress has set precedents for significant domestic spending, that spending will ever be dialed back in any meaningful way — tells one at a glance why the Obama Administration will be a disaster for the American economy and, ultimately, the American electorate. Indeed, the only one of these deficit projections that is reasonably certain is the single most frightening one — for the current year!

If that graph doesn't make you want to vomit, you're either a socialist or you're in a coma.

Posted by Beldar at 01:44 AM in Congress, Current Affairs, Obama, Politics (2009) | Permalink

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Comments

(1) Roy Lofquist made the following comment | Mar 25, 2009 8:08:53 PM | Permalink

Note the large increase in 2008. The Congress votes for the following year's budget. The Dems took over in '07.

(2) Dai Alanye made the following comment | Mar 25, 2009 10:19:24 PM | Permalink

If I correctly interpret the comments of Obama's teleprompter, his argument may be succinctly stated as, "The Republicans have been bad, so they have no right to complain if we are worse."

The best opposition strategy is to keep on opposing, as starry-eyed voters gradually come to realize that not all change is for the good. One thing that helps is the gradually dawning realization that BO's intellect has been vastly oversold. He actually knows very little about the practical aspects of leading a nation, and his Marxist background has left him full of misjudgments about how an economy works.

(3) kentuckymom made the following comment | Mar 26, 2009 8:11:49 AM | Permalink

Great comments. Here is an article, printed yesterday by the Louisville Courier-Journal, on Boehner's response to Obama's criticism:

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009903250563

(4) El Jefe Maximo made the following comment | Mar 26, 2009 9:48:15 AM | Permalink

"Obama Campaign," "Obama Administration." Is there a difference? Is this guy President or is he still running? Will he ever quit running? Can I ever turn on the TV or the radio ever again without seeing the guy?

(5) stan made the following comment | Mar 26, 2009 12:51:35 PM | Permalink

There is a level of dishonesty inherent in BO that exceeds anything I've ever seen in politics. The Clintons, Nixon, and others told a lot of lies, but there was usually some aspect of the falsehood that was tangentially grounded in reality. Obama just starts off in an alternate reality. He tells falsehoods on top of falsehoods.

(6) Legaladvocate made the following comment | Mar 26, 2009 10:23:19 PM | Permalink

I do believe that the best is yet to come for the American people with or without Obama.

(7) Gregory Koster made the following comment | Mar 27, 2009 5:48:59 PM | Permalink

Dear Dai Alanye: See if Jacob Weisberg of SLATE ever invites you to one his dinner parties. Already he is jumping up and down, pointing his finger (to the envy of Rahm Emanuel) at you and howling "Racist! Racist!" A beneficial side effect of The One's administration will be that such cries will be less effective as time goes on. This won't stop such johnny-one-note moral blackmailers as John Lewis or James Clyburn from shrieking it at every chance...

The opposition to The One has a problem, viz: Geo. W. was a spendthrift. Not on the scale of The One, but a spendthrift nonetheless. I never did understand this. Is the nation better off for the senior prescription drug benefit? Or No Child Left Behind? I doubt it. As a gesture of reaching across the aisle, it failed miserably. He got no credit for pushing these programs through, and they haven't worked. What's left except colossal bureaucracies and billions in debt?

There were many reasons The One triumphed in 2008. His skin color was prominent in pushing him through. A corrupt, bigoted, press was another. But the biggest factor was that The One was indubitably perceived as the most "not-Bush". His actions since strapping on the sword of George Washington give us all a hearty laugh at that notion.

Would McCain have been any better? On foreign affairs, beyond doubt, which is why I voted for him? But with this economic storm, who can doubt that McC would be running in circles, bawling Everything's under control, don't panic. Oh, sure, the string of projected deficits might be "only" a trillion instead of a trillion five. But McC would be blasting Wall Street just as hard as The One, and might have a few idiotic notions of his own, e.g. inviting Andrew Cuomo to run his Justice Department with a mandate for mass hangings outside Trinity Church at high noon, complete with hot dog vendors and beer for the ochlocrats. Worst of all, Sarah Palin, a strong hope for the GOP's future would have been dragged down with McC's silliness.

This scenario depresses me. So I can see a ray of light in The One's ascendence. His idiocies are choice. He will learn on the job, and the tuition bills for the nation will be horrifying. There's a distinct possibility that the US will decline and face a terrific fight for its place in the sun. I can't think of a better way to discredit leftism and leftists. It would have been better if the GOP hadn't corrupted itself. But the temptations of Washington are too much for most people, which is why term limits, and a lot of imprisoned lobbyists are so necessary these days.

Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster

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