President Obama, like many presidents before him, would like to have it both ways: get broad bipartisan support for his domestic agenda without compromising it. Of course, in the real world, politics doesn’t work that way – you can charm, cajole, browbeat, bribe and blackmail your way to a handful of votes here and there, but unless (like Reagan) you have a substantial faction of | Read More »
If President Obama wants to do bipartisan legislation in the Senate, his best bet may be the co-sponsor of McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman, etc. If he wants sole Democratic ownership of the colossal stimulus bill, he can just say “I won” and leave ready-to-make-a-deal Republicans without a reason to make a deal. Looks like Senator McCain has figured out that the President has chosen Door #2: | Read More »
The great baseball writer Bill James once opined, only partly tongue in cheek, that the one among the Lord’s divine duties that He really seemed to enjoy was punishing arrogance and hubris. Certainly history tells us that the Oval Office has served up a steaming plate of humble pie to many better men than Barack Obama over the years, and now it’s his turn. Recall | Read More »
The state of Kentucky has, for the past six days, been under a state of emergency declared by Gov. Steve Beshear last Tuesday in the aftermath of heavy winter storms that knocked out power lines and is being followed by flooding as the snow melts. * On Saturday, the state finally called up the entire Kentucky National Guard, its largest mobilization in its history, and | Read More »
There’s a long tradition of your basic ceremonial honors between the White House and the National Pastime, all of which is well and good even during times when you may not like the current occupant of the Oval Office. But really, does the game need to do this? The Chicago White Sox are aiming to release a President Barack Obama-themed version of their cap in | Read More »
One hopes the new Administration’s homeland security policy will be less porous than its inauguration invite list: One of the religious leaders invited to address Barack Obama’s inaugural prayer service Wednesday heads an Islamic group named by federal prosecutors as a co-conspirator in a terrorism-fundraising trial in Texas. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America, is scheduled to join Christian ministers and | Read More »
Sally Quinn of the Washington Post has a recommendation for the Obamas to choose the National Cathedral as their place of worship that is practically a parody of liberal attitudes towards religion:
If you’ve read my Integrity Gap series on Barack Obama, or lengthier treatments like David Freddoso’s book, you will be familiar with what was probably the most scandalously under-reported story of 2008, which is President-Elect Obama’s deep and longstanding ties to machine politics in Illinois, most notably to the Daley machine in Chicago. You’ll also recognize two other key themes: Obama’s ties to politically well-connected | Read More »
It’s rather poignant to watch the media love-fest over Obama’s ‘honymoon’ period – the fawning over Michelle’s pricey fashions, the breathless announcements of how wonderful everything will be as hope soars on clouds of euphoria – and wonder how the Bush presidency would have started if we’d been given a beginning like this, rather than the corrosive and unrelenting assault that consumed his presidency from | Read More »
Just in case you were wondering whether the Obama campaign’s “change” slogan means changing the government or changing America…here’s an actual SMS message received by one of the RS Contributors today from the Obama campaign: People who love their country can change it! Make sure everyone you know votes for Barack today. Contrast John McCain: My country has never had to prove anything to me, | Read More »
I will make now a prediction about one thing we will see in the event of an Obama Presidency, and stick by it: Obama will never be free of his past.
Over at NRO, the indefatigable Andrew McCarthy looks at Obama’s statements about redistribution and posits that, as president, he could try to revive a Soviet-backed UN treaty previously endorsed by the Carter Administration: In 1966, with key help from the Soviet Union, the United Nations began promoting a monstrosity of a treaty known as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). It | Read More »
More goodies to expect from a Democratic president and Congress: -Elimination of tax breaks for 401(k)s in favor of a government system. -Bailout for Obama’s buddies in the ethanol industry. (Yes, this one comes from Bush’s Agriculture Department…but just remember that McCain is Big Ethanol’s least favorite Senator, while Obama is its favorite). -Obama says that taxes are bad, so he has a plan to | Read More »
That would be…Gov. Palin. And in another example of what Tom Maguire calls “the now-so-obvious-it-was-inevitable media surge in support of Sarah Palin,” CNN actually notices that Palin may indeed be popular with people whose votes are needed to win the election. David Gergen even speculates that she may carry her own reverse-Bradley effect: “It may well be that there is … a group of people | Read More »
One of the more surreal arguments made on behalf of Obama is that he showed us something meaningful about his temperament by his handling of the credit crisis. It’s certainly the case that we judge potential presidents by how they have been tested in crisis, and that we have no previous experience by which to judge how Obama handles crises other than hard times on | Read More »
One of the recurring themes of the Obama campaign is that his supporters dismiss anything they find inconvenient in his record, platform or statements on the trail on the theory that he was just doing or saying stuff he doesn’t believe to pander to somebody else, whereas when he says something I like, that of course must be what he really means. Only the shallowness | Read More »
You will find no better illustration of the hazards of simply asking a question Barack Obama doesn’t want to answer than the frenzy on the part of Obama’s campaign and his allies in the media and the Left blogs to attack Joe the Plumber. The amazing thing is, this isn’t a guy who was set up by one of the campaigns to tell a sob | Read More »
The media and the Obama campaign have repeatedly told us that the economy is the only issue in this campaign, and that Barack Obama’s proposals, rather than his record, are the only way to judge him on the economy. If they mean it, they will demand that he clarify where he stands on the promises at the core of his tax and spending platforms.
Here is what Barack Obama said last night about Bill Ayers and Obama’s role in handing over millions of dollars to “education” programs designed by Ayers, long an advocate of using education for purposes of left-wing indoctrination: Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago. Forty years ago, when I was 8 years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group. | Read More »
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