Here's a bit from Jonah Goldberg:
In 1964, Barry Goldwater gave an uncompromisingly conservative and liberty-loving speech to the Republican National Convention. A reporter in the audience couldn’t believe his ears. “My God! He’s going to run as Barry Goldwater!”
I had a similar reaction to President Obama’s State of the Union address.
For all the talk of how he needed to “pivot” to the center, the Obama we saw was the same Obama who ran for president and the same Obama we’ve seen over the last year. His White House is so deep in their own bunker they could sustain a Dresden-style carpet bombing without even hearing the dishware rattle. For instance, leading social scientists with the most sophisticated statistical tools concluded that Scott Brown’s election was like a slap in the face with a wet, semi-frozen flounder. Yet the White House’s response is to claim that a vote for Brown, who promised to derail Obamacare, was really a vote for . . . Obamacare.
Here's Steyn's articulate take:
The ever tinnier, more perfunctory sophomoric uplift at the start and finish can’t conceal the hope-killing, jobs-slaying, soul-sapping message in between, which is perfectly consistent, and has been for two years. As President Obama sees it, whatever the problem — from health care to education, banking to the environment — the solution is more Washington.
Here's a portion of Charen's comments from NRO:
The speech answered the question that began to form when Republicans took the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey and came into sharp focus after Scott Brown delivered his haymaker on January 21: Would Obama pivot like Clinton in 1994 or not?
He will not.
This isn’t surprising. Obama is a conviction politician. Raised in a left-wing cocoon, he has never given evidence of being anything other than a true-believing left-liberal. Describing his college experience in The Audacity of Hope, he writes: “I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.” Sounds like a list of his czars.
So no, President Obama is not going to reassure voters that he has gotten their message. He is not going to tack to the political center. He is not going to acknowledge overreaching on the matter of nationalizing health care. These are moral issues for him. Promoting his health-care reform to religious leaders last August, he said, “It is a core ethical and moral obligation that we look after each other. In the wealthiest nation on earth, we are neglecting to live up to that call.” We embarrass him.
I appreciate the point Charen has made -- and I agree with her. It causes my respect for Obama to go up. Though I disagree with his convictions and foundational political worldview I agree that these are moral issues. It's really not an option to say "let's let it go -- no big deal." It is a *very* big deal to determine how large a role the State will take in the lives of individuals. It is a *very* big deal to determine how much of the Constitution one will follow. It is a *very* big deal to decide for others how they will proffer charity. It is a *very* big deal when that same charity provided by the State harms people more and makes life worse for them. Those are moral issues. And I applaud Obama for that principle and integrity of sticking to his moral convictions and values.
3 Comments •
Comments:
My issue with him and his cronies are that they are:
1. Spending, spending, spending with no end in sight.
2. They never REALLY intended to be more “transparent” with regard to debating health care on C-Span; just more of the same old back room deals.
3. He is way too far left of center on almost every issue. He is a radical pro-abortionist, for example.
4. “Constitution? CONSTITUTION? We don’t need no stinking Constitution”. Protecting the Constitution SHOULD be his #1 priority, but it’s not.
How about fixing healthcare in small incremental doses?
1. Make it portable across state lines.
2. Eliminate or minimize pre-existing conditions.
3. Must. Have. Tort. Reform.
4. More cafeteria-style plans, where individuals can pick and choose their coverage based on their needs but have a catastophic plan “just in case”.
5. How about TAX CREDITS for businesses that choose to cover their employees to increase the number of folks covered?
Do one of these a year over the next decade…let the private sector absorb them without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.