Posted on 03/29/2009 10:10:57 PM PDT by To Hell With Poverty
I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the Right, which is beginning to cause me concern. I am referring to the over-the-top hysteria in response to the first months in office of our new president, which distinctly reminds me of the “Bush Is Hitler” crowd on the Left.
Speaking of this crowd, have you seen any “I am so sorry” postings from that quarter as Obama continues and even escalates the former president's war policy in Afghanistan and attempts to consolidate his military occupation of Iraq?
Conservatives, please. Let's not duplicate the manias of the Left as we figure out how to deal with Mr. Obama. He is not exactly the anti-Christ, although a disturbing number of people on the Right are convinced he is.
I have recently received commentaries that claim that "Obama's speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history" and "never has a politician in this land had such a quasi-religious impact on so many people" and "Obama is a narcissist," which leads the author to then compare Obama to David Koresh, Charles Manson, Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Excuse me while I blow my nose.
This fellow has failed to notice that all politicians are narcissists – and that a recent American president was a world-class exponent of the imperial me. So what? Political egos are one of the reasons the Founders put checks and balances on executive power. As for serial lying, is there a politician that cannot be accused of that? And once, the same recent president set a pretty a high bar in this category, and we survived it. As for Obama's speeches, they are hardly in the Huey Long, Louie Farrakhan, Fidel Castro vein. They are in fact eloquently and cleverly centrist and sober.
So what's the panic? It is true that Obama has shown surprising ineptitude in his first months in office, but he's not a zero with no accomplishments as many conservatives seem to think – unless you regard beating the Clinton machine and winning the presidency as nothing. But in doing this you fall into the “Bush-is-an-idiot” bag of liberal miasmas.
It is also true Obama has ceded his domestic economic agenda to the House Democrats and spent a lot of money in the process. But what’s the surprise in this? After all, Bush and McCain both proposed (and in Bush's case pushed through) massive government giveaways (which amount to government takeovers as well). This is bad, but it doesn't make Obama a closet Mussolini, however deplorable the conservatives among us may regard it. Moreover, he's already run into political resistance even within his own party. Charlie Rangel has made it clear that the itemized deduction tax hike is not going through his committee – and that should tell you that the American system, the one the Founders created, is still in place.
Even as astute a conservative thinker as Mark Steyn has been swept up in the tide that thinks Obama is a “transformative” radical. But look again at his approach to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both cases, as noted, he is carrying out the Bush policies – the same that he once joined his fellow Democrats in condemning. And that should be reassuring to anyone concerned about where he is heading as commander-in-chief.
In other words, while it's reasonable to be unhappy with a Democratic administration and even concerned because the Democrats are now a socialist party in the European sense, we are not witnessing the coming of the anti-Christ. A good strategy for political conflicts is to understand your opponent first – not to underestimate him, but not to overestimate him either.
Once conservatives do that, they will find some silver linings in the first moves of the Obama administration. Through a combination of ineptitude and zeal, Obama has in two short months locked down the conservative and Republican base. On fetal stem-cell research, on borders (e-verification), on spending, on unions, on shutting down talk radio, Obama has flexed the leftist muscle so nakedly and unmistakably that there isn’t a conservative left who will vote Democratic in the next election (and there were many who did so in the last).
As we move forward, Obama faces increasingly tough choices in the wars against Islamic fascism in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza and Iran. Hopefully, he will make the right choices, and should he do so conservatives will need to be there to support him. If he makes the wrong choices, conservatives will need to be there to oppose him. But neither our support nor our opposition should be based on hysterical responses to policies that we just don't like. Let’s leave that kind of behavior to the liberals who invented it.
What puzzles me is that he was on the radio the other day complaining about what’s currently going on. I guess it depends on what day you catch him?
Dude...my savings and retirement were going in the tank under Bush.
LOL! Okay, now I know that you are not being entirely honest here, or you have one of the dumbest financial planners in history.
Have a great day.
obama didn't 'beat the clinton machine'. It was handed to him on a silver platter by Soros and by way of hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign middle eastern campaign contributions. The sources of his warchest of campaign contributions are unknown to this day. The FEC is corrupt and was paid off by middle eastern oil money long ago.
It's not unreasonable think that Hillary, being the money grubber that she is, took a dive after she was offered a large enough sum to keep her happy. All the noise she once made about paying off her campaign debts evaporated fast enough not too long after the election was over.
I hope Horowitz is not Pining for his Past.
Hail! Emperor Obamadus!
We who are about to die salute you!
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. We are all Alinskyites now.
-ccm
I thought it was impossible that Horowitz would ever take a position like this. We live in an Alice in Wonderland Nation, my friend.
I don’t know.
It may also be that he realizes THE most powerful radical in the world is having his ear whispered into by William Ayers, one of those that Horowitz has been demonizing for years.
Let’s not forget that it was also Horowitz’s time with the Black Panthers that opened his eyes to the horrors of the New Left.
He could be terrified that someone of that “ilk” will liquidate him and he may be trying to spread some cover for himself.
But who knows. All I know is that our country and the liberty that our Founding Fathers carved out for us is under attack by global forces like it never has been before. We must protect our country against any of our enemies and any of our enemies’ defenders.
As far as this reply is to Mr. Horowitz: "Have you noticed the checks and balances Hussein wants to dismantle, so he and the dims can force their FAR LEFT agenda down our throats?"
Were that there were...
Welcome to FR. Horowitz is off base here. You fight fire with fire.
We stop this anti American faux POTUS by keeping the pressure on him. Obama hates criticism, so we are going to criticise him, and it is well deserved critique. The man is ruining our country and is backed by democrats that act more like they are mafia than elected servants of the people.
David has NEVER been a conservative.
I agree with him some of the time, but on this, he is wrong. In fact, this runs counter to his claims of leftist indoctrination in schools.
That is what Obama and his minions are all about.
AMEN! Dead weight, indeed. And there seems to be millions of tonnage of dead weight all around us.
Horowitz is 97% foreign policy, with nice words for the rest of the package only because the contemporary political dichotomy entails an uneasy convergence of multiple ideologies. Whatever is mated, within the contemporary political sphere, to Wilsonianism, he will eagerly trumpet, even if it means going back to his commie-loving, anti-capitalism days.
Bush started all this TARP madness and McCain ‘suspended his campaign’ vote for it. I don’t see that we’d be much better off on the economy if either of those two were in office instead of Obama during this time.
That’s hardly praise for Obama.
Also a LOT of Republicans in Congress were for the TARP plan ... before they were against it.
Just sayin’
ping.....great thread-—fantastic comments.
Btw Lancey Howard, I think Horowitz found the dreaded Brown Acid. Nothing else explains it.
David Horowitz: SIDS - Stuck In Denial Syndrome.
He seems to have been blowing the white powder in, over the last year or so. Schizophrenic.
He is right. I heard it about Clinton from my mom, Bush from my friends and now Obama from people on the net- I do think Obama is worse than Clinton, but only cause he CAN get away with much of it. His secrecy in particular is disturbing- little to no announcement on WH website -updates infrequent when he MUST be up to things... but he is not Stalin or Lenin. He can’t be- the bigger threat is what his spending will do when we cant fund it anymore. I imagine a complete collapse of society. In that, his biggest threat is not paying attention to what is going on- financially, or not caring. We are being robbed by the banks and the Republicans dont care and neither do the Dems. It is unbelievable.
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