Where We Create & Share Music, Talk Radio Shows, Conservative
Posted By Woody Pendleton
FREE ZONE MEDIA CENTER WFZR
Barack
Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not
waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in
2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose
style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years
ago.
Recently,
the president purportedly has been reassuring Democratic donors that
his signature achievement, Obamacare, could be readjusted in the second
term -- something Republicans have promised to do for the last three
years. What an evolution: We have gone from being told we would love
Obamacare, to granting exemptions to favored companies from it, to
private assurances to modify it after re-election -- all before it was
even fully enacted.
Obama's
calls for a new civility four years ago are apparently inoperative. The
vow to "punish our enemies" and the intimidation of Romney campaign
donors are a long way from the soaring speech at Berlin's Victory Column
and "Yes, we can." Obama once called for a focus on issues rather than
personal invective. But now we mysteriously hear again of Romney's dog,
his great-great-grandfather's wives, and a roughhousing incident some 50
years ago in prep school.
The
"hope and change" slogan for a new unity gave way to a new "us versus
them" divide. "Us" now means all sorts of targeted appeals to identity
groups like African-Americans for Obama, Latinos for Obama, gays for
Obamas, greens for Obama, or students for Obama. "Them," in contrast,
means almost everyone else who cannot claim hyphenation or be counted on
as a single-cause constituency. In 2008, the Obama strategy was
supposedly to unite disparate groups with a common vision; in 2012, it
is to rally special interests through common enemies.
Remember
the Obama who promised an end to the revolving door of lobbyists and
special-interest money? Then came the likes of Peter Orszag, who went
from overseeing the Obama budget to being a Citigroup grandee, and
financial pirate Jon Corzine, who cannot account for more than $1.5
billion of investors' money but can bundle cash for Obama's re-election.
If you told fervent supporters in 2008 that by early 2012 Obama would
set a record for the most meet-and-greet fundraisers in presidential
history, they would have thought it blasphemy.
Obama
is said to go over every name on his Predator drone
targeted-assassination list -- a kill tally that is now seven times
larger in less than four years than what George W. Bush piled up in
eight. Guantanamo is just as open now as it was in 2008. If Obama
supporter and former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh was once accusing
President Bush of being "torturer in chief," he is now an Obama insider
arguing that bombing Libya is not really war and that taking out an
American citizen and terrorist suspect in Yemen is perfectly legal.
Previously bad renditions, preventative detentions and military
tribunals are now all good.
Some
disgruntled conservatives jumped ship in 2008 for the supposedly
tightfisted Obama when he called for halving the deficit in four years
and derided George Bush as "unpatriotic" for adding $4 trillion to the
national debt. Yet Obama already has exceeded all the Bush borrowing in
less than four years.
What accounts for the radical change in mood from four years ago?
The
blue-state model of large government, increased entitlements and high
taxes may be good rhetoric, but it is unsound reality. Redistribution
does not serve static, aging populations in a competitive global world
-- as we are seeing from California to southern Europe. "Hope and
change" was a slogan in 2008; it has since been supplanted by the
reality of 40 straight months of 8-percent-plus unemployment and record
deficits -- despite $5 billion in borrowed priming, near-zero interest
rates, and vast increases in entitlement spending.
Obama's
bragging of drilling more oil despite, rather than because of, his
efforts is supposed to be a clever appeal to both greens and business.
Private equity firms are good for campaign donations but bad when a
Republican rival runs them. "Romney would do worse," rather than "I did
well," is the implicit Obama campaign theme of 2012.
To
be re-elected, a now-polarizing Obama believes that he must stoke the
fears of some of us rather than appeal to all of our hopes by defending a
successful record, while smearing with the old politics rather than
inspiring with the new. That cynical calculation and constant hedging
and flip-flopping may be normal for politicians, but eventually it
proves disastrous for the ones who posed as messianic prophets.
