Posted on 02/08/2009 5:23:02 PM PST by Steelfish
February 06, 2009
‘I Won,’ He Explained On the stimulus, when Obama says “I won,” he’s out of better arguments.
By Rich Lowry
Barack Obama, a reputed master of the persuasive art, has settled on his central argument for the stimulus bill: I won.
That Obama is reduced to this crude appeal is a symptom of the intellectual collapse of the case for his stimulus bill, a congressional spendfest untethered from its stated goal of providing a rapid “jolt” to the economy.
As far as political arguments go, “I won” has its power—provided it’s made on behalf of an agenda ratified by the American electorate. But Obama didn’t campaign on a sprawling, nearly $1 trillion new spending plan.
If he had pledged in October to double federal domestic discretionary spending in a matter of weeks—including increasing the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts by a third, spending hundreds of millions more on federal buildings and throwing tens of billions on every traditional liberal priority from job training to Pell Grants—he’d have been hard-pressed to win at all.
The president should read the transcript of the third presidential debate. He claimed his program represented “a net spending cut.” He called himself “a strong proponent of pay-as-you-go. Every dollar that I’ve proposed, I’ve proposed an additional cut so that it matches.” He added, “We need to eliminate a whole host of programs that don’t work.”
Now, circumstances change, and no president can adhere to every jot and tittle from his campaign, but the “I won” argument only works if the campaign program matches the governing program. Obama himself seems confused on what exactly “I won” means.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
Don’t forget Pelosi trotted out the same logic. “We (democrats) won. We wrote the bill.”
Show us your voting record in the senate when Bush won.
Present dosen’t count.
He won a ticket to hell, there is no way he will come out of this smelling like a rose, all partisan support. May they go down in flames.
And AMERICA LOST.
Great article with a bunch of speaking points for us!
Obama was not reduced to crude. He began as crude.
“I won” is the argument of a king, not a President.
And Obama has not been elected king.
Obama Got Rolled By Insider Washington....! They won not us!
This reminds me of Henry II in the film “Becket.” When Thomas Becket’s concubine killed herself to avoid being “used” by the King, Henry shouted “I am the King.”
I Don’t believe with all this stuff going on Obama Found a church for HIS FAMILY!!
Two out of three ain't bad?
"Jolt!" now. Doh! later.
But Obama didn’t campaign on a sprawling, nearly $1 trillion new spending plan.
Like the reference to Beckett.
To the victor go the spoils and pretty much everthing he’s touched since his victory is spoiled.
The little man has proven himself to be a liar, also.
Where’s the RNC? Why the heck don’t they buy TV ads to expose this fraud? Moveon and the criminals of the Soros Enterprise would have deluged the media waves by now if W had done something like this.
But, Mr Lowry, it’s a crisis!! We’re headed for catastrophe without Obama’s genius plan!! /sarcasm
My thoughts, exactly. Now if I could just figure out who is actually running the show. There has to be a puppeteer lurking somewhere behind the curtain.
Obama wasn’t the only politician to win an election, we don’t have a unitary leader in this country; but I guess Zero has yet to figure that out.
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