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The Obama Contradiction [PEGGY NOONAN]
WSJ ^ | January 29,2010 | PEGGY NOONAN

Posted on 01/29/2010 10:57:44 AM PST by ColdOne

When you watch a president give a State of the Union Address on television, you're always watching three people: the president at the podium, and the vice president and House speaker on the rise behind him. As a TV shot it's awkward. The vice president and the speaker have been instructed by media professionals not to let their eyes do what they want to do, which is survey the doings in the chamber. Instead they must stare unwaveringly at the back of the president's head. This is so that they appear to be fascinated by what he's saying, as if he's so interesting that they can't take their eyes off him. It's also so that you, the viewer, don't become distracted by wondering whom they're looking at in the audience.

It's uncomfortable for them, and boring. You, as a member of the TV audience, get to watch the president. The speaker and the vice president get to think, "Huh, he's getting a little gray in the back." The reason Nancy Pelosi often seems a little dart-eyed in these circumstances is that she's always trying to get a look at the chamber when she thinks the camera isn't on her. Joe Biden seems happy to be the fascinated person with crinkly eyes and shining teeth. But for Mrs. Pelosi it's a challenge. This is her chamber, all her people are here, and she wants to be looking at John Boehner's face and Harry Reid's and see who's cheering and who's wearing what.

But the three-shot the other night was also the

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: vichyrepublican
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To: ColdOne
Why would I be interested in anything this has-been elitist has to say? I can analyse rings around her and all the other mush mouthed elitists who speak from their ego instead of reality.

The ones that down Palin do it mostly because she went to Idaho State instead of Brwyn Mar or Wellesley, Harvard, etc.That and pretentious speaking is all to them.

vaudine

21 posted on 01/29/2010 11:35:34 AM PST by vaudine
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To: ColdOne
I never read Noonan any more. Saccharine and empty words......always.

And when she fell in love with Obama any shred of credibility she had left was gone.

22 posted on 01/29/2010 11:37:28 AM PST by ohioWfan (Proud Mom of a Bronze Star recipient!)
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To: ohioWfan

I agree. Noonan was always (maybe still is) on MSNBC. That says allot


23 posted on 01/29/2010 11:42:44 AM PST by ColdOne (:^))
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To: ColdOne
Wonder if she has meaningful conversations with Olbermann and Matthews. ;)

(No self-respecting conservative would come near that place!)

24 posted on 01/29/2010 11:47:37 AM PST by ohioWfan (Proud Mom of a Bronze Star recipient!)
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To: choctaw man

Pelosi and Biden both looked like they were witnessing a train wreck.

LOL!


25 posted on 01/29/2010 11:49:37 AM PST by Califreak (Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver.)
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To: ColdOne

Cross a Freeper once and they’ll never let you forget it. You’re banished for life. Noonan and O’Reilly immediately come to mind. Sometimes it seems like every Freeper has their own personal deal breaker after which negotiation is no longer possible.

Unilaterally rejecting those who tick us off, while ignoring their assets will not bode well for the GOP in 2012. I’m sometimes dismayed at the uninhibited willingness for conservatives to put so many Republicans on their permanent s**t list. Cross enough people off your ‘A’ list and we’ll end up with another John McCain.


26 posted on 01/29/2010 11:50:11 AM PST by Tar and Feathers (www.tarandfeathers.shugartmedia.com)
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To: ColdOne
President Obama's speech was not a pivot, a lunge or a plunge. It was a little of this and a little of that, a groping toward a place where the president might successfully stand. It was well written and performed with élan.

No, Peggy, you're wrong again. It was a mess of platitudes, cliches, and meaningless rhetoric, delivered in a petulant, peevish, whiney tone.

27 posted on 01/29/2010 11:51:50 AM PST by hsalaw
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To: ohioWfan

She broke my heart when she swooned over Zero. I loved that woman.


28 posted on 01/29/2010 11:54:14 AM PST by Badray
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To: Tar and Feathers
Yours is the mindset that got the GOP to be a irrelevant minority party. Peggy Noonan has been an O-bot for 2 years now. She is a PR drone for his regime.

How long is she allowed to gush like a teenage girl about her man 0 before the weak spined “can't we all just get along” GOP Establishment types finally wake up to the fact she has switched political sides?

29 posted on 01/29/2010 12:00:30 PM PST by MNJohnnie ("The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples' money" Lady Thatcher)
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To: ColdOne
Hmmm... Peggy Noonan column:

Wait for it... Wait for it...

As the TV cameras panned the chamber, I saw a friendly acquaintance of the president, a Republican who bears him no animus. Why, I asked him later, did the president not move decisively to the political center?

Because he is more "intellectually honest" than that, he said. "I don't think he can do a Bill Clinton pivot, because he's not a pragmatist, he's an ideologue. He's a community organizer. He mixes the discrimination he felt as a young man with the hardship so many feel in this country, and he wants to change it and the way to change that is government programs and not opportunity."

The great issue, this friendly critic added, is debt. The public knows this; Congress and the White House do not. "To me the Republicans are as rotten as the Democrats" in terms of spending.

Yep, there it is. She's nothing if not consistent. What the hell happened to this lady? Is it a menopausal thing?

30 posted on 01/29/2010 12:03:51 PM PST by presidio9 (Islam is as Islam does)
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To: ColdOne

Peggy Noonan is dead to me. Zero was elected with her help.


31 posted on 01/29/2010 12:23:51 PM PST by Always A Marine
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To: ColdOne

Too much boiler-plate Peggy Noonan snooze-prose before she ever gets to the point. Pass.


32 posted on 01/29/2010 12:29:28 PM PST by DTogo (High time to bring back the Sons of Liberty !!)
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To: Badray
My baby done left me,
She done me wrong.
My baby done left me,
Peggy done me wrong.
Never thought it'd happen,
I'd wake up and she'd be gone.

I feel your pain, Badray. ;)

33 posted on 01/29/2010 12:40:07 PM PST by ohioWfan (Proud Mom of a Bronze Star recipient!)
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To: gaijin

But he's suave, sophisticated, can pronounce "arugula" correctly,
and from Harvard. Oh, my...
Peggy, we hardly knew ye...

34 posted on 01/29/2010 12:41:24 PM PST by HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity
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To: ColdOne
The president will get some bounce from it, and the bounce will go away.
His bounce is like a lead weight in water. Despite all of the happy, hopeful predictions, it isn't happening.
35 posted on 01/29/2010 12:52:23 PM PST by philman_36 (Pride breakfasted with plenty, dined with poverty, and supped with infamy. Benjamin Franklin)
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To: ColdOne

It seems odd that Peggy Noonan, who went to great lengths to declare her loyalty to Obama about a year and a half ago, is now criticizing him. I guess she sees the tide has turned and now has too switch back.


36 posted on 01/29/2010 12:58:05 PM PST by mfournier (Noonan flopping in the breeze . . .)
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To: ColdOne
I could care less what Peggy Noonan has to say.
37 posted on 01/29/2010 1:01:34 PM PST by kempo
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To: MNJohnnie
Yours is the mindset that got the GOP to be a irrelevant minority party.

One little FR post does not a mindset make. (Though jumping to unfounded conclusions may be.) I'm not here to defend Noonan or any other FR persona non grata. But as far as I'm concerned, anybody that wants to be in the club is in, free to speak their mind. The GOP is a national political party, not some Spanky and Our Gang treehouse club.
38 posted on 01/29/2010 2:42:45 PM PST by Tar and Feathers (www.tarandfeathers.shugartmedia.com)
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To: mfournier

The Noonan Contradiction.


39 posted on 01/29/2010 4:11:24 PM PST by Starboard
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To: ColdOne
Because he is more "intellectually honest" than that, he said. "I don't think he can do a Bill Clinton pivot, because he's not a pragmatist, he's an ideologue. He's a community organizer. He mixes the discrimination he felt as a young man with the hardship so many feel in this country

Who is this idiot? Obama was raised in a pampered bubble of privilege. He never faced any discrimination at all his entire life. In fact much of his pathological autobiography had to do with the fact that he never felt like a real black kid for just this reason, he had to pretend to be black so he could pretend to fit in.

If Nooner is telling the truth here, this moron "friend" is an illustration of why the GOP has been a pathetic failure the last five years or so.

40 posted on 01/29/2010 6:57:32 PM PST by hinckley buzzard
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