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A Moderate Manifesto (David Brooks: "Barack Obama is not who we thought he was")
New York Times ^ | March 2, 2009 | DAVID BROOKS

Posted on 03/03/2009 5:02:37 AM PST by publius1

You wouldn’t know it some days, but there are moderates in this country — moderate conservatives, moderate liberals, just plain moderates. We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.

U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward....

The U.S. has traditionally had a relatively limited central government. But federal spending as a share of G.D.P. is zooming from its modern norm of 20 percent to an unacknowledged level somewhere far beyond.

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Front Page News; Government; Miscellaneous; Philosophy; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: bho2009; bho44; charlesfreeman; cravensquish; davidbrooks; democrat; democrats; economy; impeachobama; obama; rinopurge; rinos; squish; vichyrepublicans
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Learning for some is always too late -- "Barack Obama is not who we thought he was." Speak for yourself, David.
1 posted on 03/03/2009 5:02:38 AM PST by publius1
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To: publius1
On moderation....

A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.

Thomas Paine

2 posted on 03/03/2009 5:04:31 AM PST by mewzilla (In politics the middle way is none at all. John Adams)
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To: publius1

Du-uh!


3 posted on 03/03/2009 5:04:35 AM PST by DBCJR (What would you expect?)
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To: mewzilla

Very good quote applied aptly


4 posted on 03/03/2009 5:06:08 AM PST by DBCJR (What would you expect?)
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To: publius1

Dear Mr. Brooks,

You are an even bigger idiot than we knew you were.

Thank you, me


5 posted on 03/03/2009 5:06:14 AM PST by dforest
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To: publius1

Brooks is a Moron.

Cue the Denny Green line


6 posted on 03/03/2009 5:06:16 AM PST by downwdims (It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority)
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To: publius1
Barry O'bolshevik is precisely who I surmised he was.

What this creep does as regards the economy, the abortion issue; etc., does not suprise me.

7 posted on 03/03/2009 5:06:26 AM PST by Stepan12 (Palin & Bolton in 2012)
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To: publius1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_N1OjGhIFc

A little profanity


8 posted on 03/03/2009 5:07:03 AM PST by downwdims (It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority)
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To: downwdims
"Barack Obama is not who we thought he was"......

___________________________________

Yes he is. That's the problem.

9 posted on 03/03/2009 5:07:17 AM PST by wtc911 ("How you gonna get back down that hill?")
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To: publius1

Anybody that did ANY reading on Obama’s voting record would be able to tell he’s a Marxist, plain and simple.


10 posted on 03/03/2009 5:07:52 AM PST by chpmass
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To: publius1

On the contrary, Mr. David Brooks (aka “the apparently blind & deaf Jacka$$”), I knew who/what Mr. Barack Hussein Obama was the FIRST time I heard him speak.


11 posted on 03/03/2009 5:07:54 AM PST by WayneS (Respect the 2nd Amendment; Repeal the 16th)
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To: publius1

What a total idiot. Anybody with a brain in his head knew he was a communist. He should say he is not who we knew he was and ignored it.


12 posted on 03/03/2009 5:08:14 AM PST by screaminsunshine (f)
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To: publius1
Sorry David ,YOU ARE A MORON!

Over and over and over you were told by BO exactly what and who he was.

You CHOSE not to listen.

You can't fix STUPID!

Take your $250,000 and pay up , you MORON!

13 posted on 03/03/2009 5:08:18 AM PST by sausageseller (http://coolblue.typepad.com/the_cool_blue_blog/)
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To: downwdims

Let’s not bring religion into this, plaeas!

;^)


14 posted on 03/03/2009 5:08:33 AM PST by WayneS (Respect the 2nd Amendment; Repeal the 16th)
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To: publius1

Dude, David Brooks is a dumb-ass.


15 posted on 03/03/2009 5:09:16 AM PST by Crawdad (Barack Obama- Economic Arsonist)
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To: publius1

Moderate is a socialist pretending to be conservative.


16 posted on 03/03/2009 5:09:23 AM PST by Man50D (Fair Tax, you earn it, you keep it!)
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To: publius1

If David Brooks didn’t know what Obama stood for all his political life, then he (Brooks) is too stupid to have a regular column in a major publication. There is no other possible explanation.


17 posted on 03/03/2009 5:09:23 AM PST by abb ("What ISN'T in the news is often more important than what IS." Ed Biersmith, 1942 -)
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To: publius1

Gee thanks for noticing now Mr feel good writer...sorry your sweet emotions of the chosen one got the best of you before he was elected and you fell head over heels in love with him like most brain dead Americans. YOU didn’t do your homework originally lazy azz. NO DO OVERS-sorry. He’s ours now butt wipe.


18 posted on 03/03/2009 5:09:48 AM PST by oust the louse (This Country now has a smelly BO problem.....)
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To: publius1
We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

Yes, we all like a little pie in the sky now and then.

19 posted on 03/03/2009 5:10:05 AM PST by Graybeard58 (Selah)
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To: publius1

Huh. Maybe David Brooks and these other “moderate” reporters and columnists will now see the value in vetting and investigating every politician who appears. Anyone who even scratched the surface of the Messiah would have seen the radical socialist.

Oh well, four years of his nonsense that this country has to bear.

Thanks for being a kool-aid drinking putz David!


20 posted on 03/03/2009 5:10:12 AM PST by Anitius Severinus Boethius
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