Obama is not a stupid man, despite popular opinion here. He is formidable foe.
I absolutely agree with you. We on FreeRepublic who have insisted on dismissing Obama as a Jimmy Carter incompetent have done the conservative movement a disservice. The man is not incompetent, he is a radical ideologue possessed of a power of persuasion typical of narcissists and an unremitting commitment to his egotistical view of his role in the world and the idea that he has not just special role but a special truth.
By painting Obama as an incompetent, we in effect excuse his Machiavellian actions. It diverts the people from confronting the truth and the danger which he represents to the nation.
The following link is to an old FR thread, about an even older conservative booklet called “The Revolution Was”, written in 1938 about FDR and the New Deal. I post excerpts once in awhile. It is ALL happening again - amazingly, chillingly so. Only worse.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2185147/posts
An Excerpt:
There was a prodigious literature of revolutionary thought concealed only by the respectability of its dress....
To the revolutionary this same dreary stuff was the most exciting reading in the world. It was knowledge that gave him a sense of power. One who mastered the subject to the point of excellence could be fairly sure of a livelihood by teaching and writing, that is, by imparting it to others, and meanwhile dream of passing at a single leap from this mean obscurity to the prestige of one who assists in the manipulation of great happenings; while one who mastered it to the point of genius — that one might dream of becoming himself the next Lenin....
Worse outwitted were those who kept trying to make sense of the New Deal from the point of view of all that was implicit in the American scheme, charging it therefore with contradiction, fallacy, economic ignorance, and general incompetence to govern.
But it could not be so embarrassed and all that line was wasted, because, in the first place, it never intended to make that kind of sense, and secondly, it took off from nothing that was implicit in the American scheme. It took off from a revolutionary base.
The design was European. Regarded from the point of view of revolutionary technic it made perfect sense. Its meaning was revolutionary and it had no other. For what it meant to do it was from the beginning consistent in principle, resourceful, intelligent, masterly in workmanship, and it made not one mistake......
Having passed this crisis, the New Deal went on from one problem to another, taking them in the proper order, according to revolutionary technic; and if the handling of one was inconsistent with the handling of another, even to the point of nullity, that was blunder in reverse.
The effect was to keep people excited about one thing at a time, and divided, while steadily through all the uproar of outrage and confusion a certain end, held constantly in view, was pursued by main intention.
The end held constantly in view was power.