Posted on 03/06/2009 3:07:51 PM PST by Natty Bumppo@frontier.net
This week, the White House turned to something truly transformational: demonizing a talk-radio celebrity, while playing “bait-and-switch” with the economy, civil liberties, and defense. It’s exactly the kind of agenda that people like Rush Limbaugh warned would follow an Obama election, and which so many Obamistas rushed to assure Americans would not happen.
The bait-and-switch game has been ruled illegal in a number of contexts, but is still alive in politics. Maybe it’s a Chicago thing, but throwing out McKuen-esque platitudes while sharpening the knives seems to be the Obama M.O. The radical that many warned was lurking beneath the cosmopolitan exterior of this post-partisan / post-racial candidate has arrived, and the smoke screens are rapidly thinning to reveal the political prestidigitation concealed to all but a few.
- The candidate who promised to cut waste and “go through the budget line by line” is sitting quietly by while his Party parades pork-laden and landmark earmarked legislation in stimulus bills, budget bills, and omnibus budget plans.
- The candidate who pledged to “find common ground” in the debate over abortion seeks to gut the “conscience protections” for health-care professionals who refuse to take part in morally objectionable procedures.
- The candidate who touted government transparency sponsors federal guidelines that would inhibit inspectors general from conducting audits into government malfeasance.
- The candidate who called himself post-partisan has failed to cobble together any single bipartisan action, while the leaders of his Party continue to thumb their noses at Republicans.
- The candidate who promised tax cuts to “95% of Americans” has paraded out a budget with tax increases that will affect 100%.
- The candidate who swore to restore the global image of America treated the British Prime Minister with less respect than General Washington treated Cornwallis after Yorktown, while his Secretary of State was busy mangling relations with Russia, China, Israel, and Iran.
- The candidate who insisted on integrity has put a tax cheat in charge of chasing down tax cheats (Geithner), a cafeteria Catholic who favors abortion in charge of health care (Sebelius), a chicken-little pop-science poseur as a Science Advisor (Holdren), and a blatant Israel basher in charge of intelligence (Freeman).
Already, those enlightened voices that assured us Obama wasn’t really as Leftist as he looked now have quavers in their voices. Dowd, Buckley, Brooks, Gergen, and Sullivan – all of whom supported the center-left Obama – are finding themselves with buyers remorse over the culture warrior they helped to elect.
In the meantime, the Stock Market continues to tank while the Congresscritters stuff their own pockets, Catholic hospitals may close rather than be forced to conduct abortions, whistleblowers in government will be silenced, the gulf between the parties grows, consumer confidence continues to slide, and the credibility of the Administration slides even more.
It’s not just the pundits who are started to feel buyer's remorse. Thousands of Americans hit the streets last week to stage “tea parties” to protest the already mounting excesses of this Administration, with more to follow. Too many have realized Winston Churchill was right – that taxing a nation into prosperity is like trying to lift oneself while standing in a bucket.
The answer from the White House on all of this is pure Chicago, pure bait and switch (which, in some circles, is abbreviated as “BS”) – put together an elite team to beat up on Rush Limbaugh. Not since Nixon has a President put such weight behind taking on a private citizen, clearly in the hopes that the pyrotechnic debate over talk radio will eclipse the debate that should be taking place over the economy, the imperatives and limits before Congress, and the hard-Left agenda that candidate Obama glossed over, but President Obama pursues.
Clearly, the President hopes to cover up the amateur-hour ambiance of his nascent Administration with a little irrelevant sound-and-fury over whether conservatives should refrain from disagreeing with him. He has declared war on “the lobbyists” (that is, the ones he didn’t hire), to obscure the debate over his bloated budget, and he has declared war on a pundit to obscure the debate over everything else.
That kind of stuff may work in little towns like Chicago, but this is the big-time. We expect more. The rush to judgment all of this gets the President may not be the one he wants.
There was nothing "lurking" about it. It was in plain sight for anyone to see. The interviews on YouTube, his writings in his own books, his associations, his past as a community organizer, etc.
If that is "lurking", then the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was "subtlety".
Yes, it was there all the time. The ‘white guilt’ effect and the blatant racism of blacks is what turned the tide for him. One side inwardly knew he is trouble, the other didn’t care - after all his hatred won’t affect them.
Omigod. I'd totally forgotten about the hapless infantile Mckuen.
"Listen to the Warm," for chrissakes.
I think we have a winner for today’s posts.
Nixon put together an "enemies" list but never did anything about it except let it get into the press. Clinton went after "enemies" personally and with gusto and perhaps a bit more. So far inconvenient people around Hussein have not been dying in odd accidents, but then we don't know much about him before he became president.
“and the smoke screens are rapidly thinning to reveal the political prestidigitation concealed to all but a few.”
Yeah Inspector Clouseau, real stealth, just like Liberace being gay and all. Nobody could have predicted that.
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