A Critic Finds Obama Policies a Perfect Target (Bill Wilson of Americans for Limited Government)

New York Times ^ | September 25, 2009 | Scott Shane

[reaganaut1]

FAIRFAX, Va. — It is the weekly research meeting at Americans for Limited Government, and Bill Wilson is presiding with gusto. The Obama administration is serving up so many rich targets that Mr. Wilson and his crew of young conservatives hardly know where to begin.

There is the small, minority-owned firm with deep ties to President Obama’s Chicago backers, made eligible by the Federal Reserve to handle potentially lucrative credit deals.

“I want to know how these firms are picked and who picked them,” Mr. Wilson, the group’s president, tells his eager researchers.

There is the Georgetown University professor, nominated for a top State Department post, who Mr. Wilson thinks is way too soft on Fidel Castro of Cuba and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. He is pleased that a Republican senator has put a hold on the nomination.

There are three new appointees to the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities — in the hunt for political vulnerabilities, no post is too humble to scrutinize.

“Are they for using the arts as propaganda, as opposed to just art?” Mr. Wilson asks. The researchers scribble notes.

Last November, when Mr. Obama won 53 percent of the vote and stirred many Americans with soaring rhetoric about what his administration might achieve, pundits wondered whether the election marked a symbolic end of the “government is the problem” era that Ronald Reagan had started. But eight months into Mr. Obama’s presidency, his proposals have hugely energized his opposition.

A longtime Boy Scout leader with a broad light bulb of a forehead, Mr. Wilson, 56, seems to take avuncular pleasure in mentoring his young staff members at Americans for Limited Government, a nonprofit advocacy group with a $4 million budget. In person, he is no obvious firebrand.

[reaganaut1]

Go Bill! Americans for Limited Government

[subterfuge]

Mr. Wilson, 56, seems to take avuncular pleasure in mentoring his young staff members

Now you know what the gays at the Times are suggesting here, right?

[Free State Four]

While Americans for Limited Government claims 400,000 members in its literature, that turns out to be wishful thinking;

I'm still waiting for the NYT to tell me how many women are members of NOW - that go-to group for opinion on anything.