“From the people who brought you hope and change“: White House reporter Keith Koffler explains how Obama is now setting up the Republicans to take the blame for all his failures:
Obama must make his proposals as big a deal as possible, so that everyone knows how hard he’s “trying to help.” That’s why he’s scheduled an address to Congress. No higher profile than that.
And he must calibrate his ideas as carefully as possible so that they seem like they should be palatable to the GOP. He’ll offer ideas that some Republicans have supported, but which in the current high-deficit environment will be rejected.
Then he will talk about his largely meaningless initiatives every chance he gets. And then later, every chance he gets, he will talk about how Republicans rejected them and ruined his noble crusade.
As a sociopath, Obama takes advantage of the fact that honest people believe everyone is honest and don’t check out everything they’re told, especially when they believe the media will check for them. Since the mainstream media almost never check anything Obama says and ignore and suppress the reporting of the people who do, Obama confidently told one of his biggest whoppers this week, “I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover.” Jazz Shaw at Hot Air supplies a convenient list of the job-killing regulatory burdens and uncertainty imposed by the Obama administration:
This is the same administration which is about to cause rolling blackouts and skyrocketing energy costs in Texas because of cross state emission standards. It’s the same president who is jacking up the CAFE standards to the point where automobile prices will rise, assuming Detroit can meet them at all. This is the president who used overly burdensome regulations to create a de facto permitorium on gulf coast drilling costing us tens of thousands of jobs and God only knows how much domestic energy stores. And this administration has used the regulatory powers of the NLRB to effectively shut down an entire new production plant for Boeing.
Andrew Stiles at National Review Online has a more detailed list of “Ten Job-Destroying Regulations.” In addition, the withdrawal of Constellation Energy from a project to build a nuclear power plant in Maryland explained in this letter is another example of how the Obama administration uses regulations and bait-and-switch tactics to create uncertainty to advance an anti-jobs, anti-cheap-energy agenda with plausible deniability.
Last week Allan Lichtman, a professor at American University, renewed his 2010 prediction that Obama will win in 2012. Prof. Lichtman developed a system of 13 keys to winning the presidential election in 1981 that has correctly predicted the winner of the last seven elections. According to Prof. Lichtman, only six keys are needed to win and Obama has nine (or eight, if the $500 million squandered on Solyndra becomes Obama’s Enron scandal, as it should).
I think Prof. Lichtman is correct, although for different reasons. My observation is that the GOP field is more concerned with the social conservative determination to use government to deny equality to gays and lesbians and pregnancy choice rights to women. However, neither of those issues threatens the economy or the republic. I think the Left is correct in asserting that the social conservative agenda is identical to a promise to impose theocracy. The inability of the Right to see the totalitarian nature of social conservatism when it is a political agenda to use government force where persuasion has failed mirrors the inability of idealistic Leftists to grasp that you can’t have free markets (aka capitalism) and socialism at the same time because there is no correct way to have a socialist planned economy that isn’t immediately both totalitarian and corrupt.
Currently the Right is treating these concerns with dismissive contempt — much to its peril — see Kathy Shaidle, Sister Toldjah and Byron York — perhaps because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. Progressives fear theocracies, not socialism. Since they believe the forces that create prosperity are unknowable and have a cargo cult mentality, they will never believe that Republicans reject Obama’s proposals based on sound economic principles of how wealth is generated. As for independents: they hate theocracies and have a childlike faith that the media are unbiased and will warn them when any candidate or politician is lying. Plus, they only tune in to the political process to find out who is the highest bidder for their vote. Add in the social conservatives who love big government and therefore won’t vote for fiscal conservative Republicans and Obama has his winning coalition.
Update, 9/16/11, Fri.: My thanks to M. Simon, who blogs at Power and Control and Classical Values, for writing about this post and linking it. I particularly appreciate that the text chosen chosen for emphasis is, “The inability of the Right to see the totalitarian nature of social conservatism when it is a political agenda to use government force where persuasion has failed ….”
Note: This was originally posted on Sept. 3, 2011. My web host lost it on Sept. 17, so I am manually restoring it. The following are the comments from the original post:
Liz, 9/4/2011, 2:15 am:
“…to use government to deny equality to gays and lesbians and pregnancy choice rights to women.”
Piece of friendy advice: don’t equate abortion and marriage equality. From personal experience, I know many lovely, hardworking people, especially in my extended family, who happen to be the saner brand of socons. And, particularly among the young, they’re having a hard time seeing what’s so bad about gay people and same sex marriage. They also can’t see how it *wouldn’t* strengthen the family.
They do, however, genuinely see abortion as murder, and putting the two together as equal rights just weakens the arguments for marriage. As does the idea that the leftists promulgate: that to support one, you have to support the other.
Plus, I know a lot of pro life, traditionally minded gays who simply want the same lives as the rest of their communities. (To be virgins until marriage; marry at around 20,21; have a big family and stay married and work hard all their lives.) This is especially true since the mainstream pro life movement has stopped whining about “The Homosexualist Agenda”. And these gays find it incredibly alienating when *some* people fighting for marriage equality try to tack on something they find completely abhorrent.
I’m pro choice as well, and I’m not trying to rag on you. But I’m approaching this from the perspective of someone who is a small town red stater, and I have to work with these people in order to gain equality. It’s a problem I have with a lot of people fighting for marriage equality who don’t have to spend Thanksgiving with these people as family and friends.
My reply to Liz, 9/4/2011, 1:59 pm:
Megan McArdle also pointed out this week that younger voters increasingly support marriage equality because they see the good of it, but have not increased their support for abortion rights because it is easy to see that abortion kills the fetus.
I’ve gone back and forth on choice because of the members of the pro-choice movement who try to extend their arguments to rationalize assisted suicide, especially for vulnerable people like my late life partner, who was quadriplegic. I oppose assisted suicide because assistive devices, assisted living, the right to refuse heroic measures and hospice care eliminate all the arguments advanced for assisted suicide.
I am pro-choice and want abortion opposed through voluntary measures that respect the liberty of women to control their own bodies. That means birth control must be legal, teenagers must receive sex education (subject to their parents’ permission), religions are limited to the realm of persuasion and welfare is reformed so parents aren’t being rewarded for having babies they can’t support.
There is no middle ground where religions are concerned. They must rule all. Only secular governments can preserve liberty. Without choice, and the fetus as a hostage, at least until it can survive outside the womb without intensive care, women will never have equality and liberty because religions view women as baby makers created to service men and be subservient to them. Only choice secures equality and liberty for women.
It is the relentless determination of religions to control the reproductive lives of everyone to serve their own greed and lust for power that is the common ground for gay equality and choice. Their goal is always a theocracy and nothing less will satisfy them. I want liberty and equality and nothing less will satisfy me. However, while the two issues have the common ground of who gets to control whose reproductive life, you are correct, they must be separate issues at the ballot box and the dinner table. Thank you for pointing that out.