Thursday, April 17, 2008

HopeChange!

Who wants another dose of New Politics?

Well I found these links and this is the best place to put them.

Personally, I'm putting these up out of morbid interest. It's amazing to see that the Dems think these clowns are fit for the job. Though BHO's stumbles are making Hillary!'s lies and power-madness seem almost endearing.


So back on the track. More and more it's becoming clear BHO is a confidence artist.

Obama offers a well-constructed lie based on the thinnest of partial truths. He wants us to believe that oil companies conduct themselves in destructive manners, and yet partners with the people who run them to get himself elected. Putting aside the mindless populism of demonizing oil companies, the hypocrisy here is obvious and laughable. If the industry is so evil and destructive, why associate himself with their CEOs at all, let alone make them part of his campaign?

...

This isn’t New Politics, it’s the same old drizzly effluvium that machine politicians use to hoodwink voters. At least by the time most of them run for high public office, they have a track record that allows voters to excuse the contradictions between their rhetoric and their alliances. Obama doesn’t even have that — in fact, has no executive experience at all. His rhetoric about rising above petty politics and the connected microparsing of “lobbyist” and “oil companies” is all he has, and it shouldn’t be enough to run for President.


New Politics eh?

And more of the same.

Senator Obama's election year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed.

There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation -- nor any other significant legislation, for that matter.

...

It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience -- and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.


A case of Right message Wrong person.

Bill Clinton has a theory why Hillary Clinton attracts older voters, while Barack Obama does better with the younger set. He told a crowd in a Pennsylvania suburb that Obama’s supporters are … inexperienced at dealing with political rhetoric. In short — younger voters are saps for a younger, charismatic liar. And he should know:



And from Victor Davis Hanson.
BHO really does keep just picking at it.
ANd what did I say about doing that?

As we saw in her spech today, Michelle won't stop — and seems again clueless that an Ivy-League educated, $300,000 plus salaried lawyer in a $1.6 million house, cannot be a perpetual victim by virtue of her race.

Cf. the latest sarcasm: "Now when is the last time you've seen a president of the United States who just paid off his loan debt? But, then again, maybe I'm out of touch."

This too won't stop, and expect more of this defiance all summer and autumn long to add to the existing corpus of a "mean" U.S. that does not merit "pride" and is full of clueless unaware citizens. Most Americans have little sympathy with anyone who feels it a is hardship to pay back thousands of dollars invested in a Harvard Law degree. Their likely rejoinder to today's sarcasm: 'Well then, if you feel pinched by paying back your loans, don't give Rev. Wright $20,000.


More from Hanson "So if religion is a crutch for the embittered of Middle America, what is the creepy Rev. Wright for Obama?"

And here's the key part.

Race has nothing to do with it; a certain smugness everything.

The American people will forgive slips, even condescension IF they are followed by genuine apology and not repeated ad infinitum. But in this case, there will be a growing weariness, followed by anger, at the notion that a Presidential candidate thinks he can say whatever he wishes, associate with whomever he wants, and feel it's the electorate's, not his own, ensuing problem.




From Jonah Goldberg Hope, Change... Retro?

There’s always been a certain cultural lag time to Barack and Michelle Obama, a kitschiness that’s hard to pinpoint. But I think I’ve got it: They’re self-hating yuppies straight out of the 1980s, which were to the Obamas what the 1960s were to the Clintons.

...

The Obamas still seem stuck in that time warp, clinging to ’80s-style resentments and political assumptions. Michelle Obama is never so eloquent as when she’s complaining about the burden of student loans for her two Ivy League degrees and covering the high cost of summer camp and piano lessons for her kids on her family’s half-million-dollars-a-year income


So, if you love the '80s and hate yourself, or at least the Mean-old-typical-white-people, or what have you, maybe BHO is for you.


And Roger Kimball has a Praise of Elitism and relates it to BHO's "clinging" comment.

The point is that reality is elitist. Failure to acknowledge that might make you feel kinder, gentler, etc., but at the significant cost of living a lie.

The ineluctability of elitism is why I rankled at the description of Obama’s bitter-small-town-guns-and-God comment as elitist. It was smug; it was self-righteous; it was blinkered, bigoted, emotionally impoverished, and otherwise odious; it but it was not in any normal sense of the word “elitist.” I do not live in Pennsylvania. But I do live in a small(ish) town; I think the Second Amendment is a vital prophylactic against the untoward prerogatives of state power; and I’d sooner “cling” to religion than the hectoring, welfare-state, just-let-us-tell-you-how-to -live-your-life directives dispensed by Michelle and Barrack Obama. But what bothers me about such directives is not their elitism but their arrogance.

Indeed, for connoisseurs of political savvy, perhaps the most disturbing thing about Obama’s mini-diatribe was the contrast it revealed between the oleaginous, feel-your-pain evangelism of hope he has on an infinite playback loop and the disabused arrogance that crackles just beneath the burnished, campaign-trail mask.

...

I think we all know exactly what he meant. He meant that he regarded most Americans as bitter, small-town, gun-toting, God-fearing, xenophobic, unemployed isolationists who needed help. That is bad enough. Even worse, however, is the disgusting pretense that he actually meant something more emollient. Most of us have gotten used to being treated with contempt by politicians. But Obama has upped the ante. It isn’t pleasant. But it is, at any rate, useful to know just how stupid he thinks we are. I for one will not forget it.


Emphasis added. Which is the important part, if you deny reality out of a desire for more "fairness" well that has some real problems.



It's also a very silly and self deluding way to go though life, but there are people who think that feelings are more important than facts.
Bill Whittle talks about this in an essay of his called Tribes. About two types of people, the pinks and the greys.

And back to Roger for a bit about bow ties and BHO supporters following the "script"

Watching the herd of independent minds in the grip of a tantrum is always amusing, and this little episode certainly offered some splendid moments. What struck me most powerfully, however, was the fact that many of my correspondents seemed to think I was criticizing their totem for being “elitist.” In fact, I meant to praise elitism. How can you tell? Well, clever hermeneuts will have noticed that the post is called “In Praise of Elitism.” That was the first hint. And then there was the fact that while I allowed that Obama’s bitter-small-town-gun-and-God-lovin’ remarks were “smug,” “self-righteous,” etc. (“blinkered, bigoted, emotionally impoverished, and otherwise odious”), I concluded that they were “not in any normal sense of the word ‘elitist.’

...

What I actually wrote didn’t matter, though. The script required that a bow-tie-and-glasses white fellow just had to criticize Obama for being elitist. If he failed to do so, no matter: just follow the script and pretend that he did."



Nuance.

Uh oh... looks like the Superdelegates may have to do their jobs. The whole point they exist (and make up 20% of the vote) is to override the popular "will".


And here we have BHO's real test.
Give him a choice: Get more revenue from the rich to fund your many, many projects or increase rates which shrinks the overall "size of the pie" and ends up reducing revenue.
The "advantage" of the second option is that is redistributes wealth more "fairly".

And this man is telling us that he can also save our economy?

Read and listen very carefully to this. The higher priority for Obama isn’t to raise revenue; it’s to ensure fairness. In order to do that, he will have the government take a bigger share of the gains and redistribute them through social programs to others. The pretense of having more money acts as a veneer for good, old-fashioned redistributionism.


Some people don't like a debate that is you know... tough on people that want to be president. Heaven forbid we hurt someone's feelings. Apparently asking "republican" questions (yes, some people think asking pertinent questions about a person's past activities is uniquely Republican) is off limits. We can't have the candidates exposed to something unpleasant, it's not like a voter in the primary may want to know about this stuff.
Ace's throughts, Michelle Malkin's, and Rachel Lucas' on that subject.


And on a related note:

If nothing else good comes from all this, at least it’ll have opened a few eyes to left-wing media bias by putting Hillary’s supporters temporarily, and bizarrely, in the position of Republicans. Why yes, Jeralyn, Keith Olbermann is “the most shameless ridiculous hack on TV.” If Hillary wins the nomination and he jumps back face-first into the tank for her, will that still be true?


Here's a bit more on the debate too.


And Anne Althouse live-blogged the debate.

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