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Maybe – *maybe* – teaching Obama?

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  January 31st, 2010 at 11:30 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Let me add a thought to this observation by Jazz Shaw:

It seems to me that Obama is a good enough politician that he can read the writing on the wall. He’s going to have to start dealing with a significantly more powerful Republican force in Congress next year and seems to be laying the groundwork to get something done. Smart for the Republicans. Smart for Obama. The problem is, a lot of the President’s most liberal supporters are clearly having a hard time coping with the idea of both parties having some input to the governmental process. They’ll come along kicking and screaming sooner or later, but for now it’s going to remain The Audacity of Cope.

…which is this: the President does not need a Beijing Consensus in order to look good.  In fact, a drubbing of his party in November would probably be excuse enough for him to abandon what are a whole raft of unpopular policy positions, appear ‘bipartisan,’ and run on that in 2012.  It would require a certain willingness for the President to throw his legislative colleagues under the bus en masse, though: and, really, how likely is that?

Moe Lane

PS: Primary challenge?  Bless your heart, but the President’s already having the rules changed so that others cannot not do unto him as he did unto Clinton.  Gotta love those top-down political organizations, yes?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://charlemagne-the-hammer.blogspot.com/ DerKrieger

    …MUST be aggressive in pushing for conservative solutions and establishing that as the starting point for any negotiations with the Left. For decades we’ve been undermined by our RINO’s who never fail to accept the Left’s premises as the starting point for any negotiations and we end up losing time after time. If there’s to be any reaching across the aisle it needs to be the Dems reaching across to our side and any Republican that reaches across the Dems needs their hands smacked. Hard.

  • acat

    and that’s why we keep getting these lousy big-government programs.

    While I suspect Obama may be sharp enough to “Clinton”, i.e. push as hard to the left as possible in the first 2 years then re-make himself as a “centrist” and “statesman”, I’m hopeful that this time we get the right Gingrich-analog. One with significantly less ego and baggage…

    Mew

  • throwback59

    pragamtist like Clinton. I, for one, am not convinced. I believe he is a dogmatic leftist who is loathe to give up his dream of remaking the country in his image.

  • throwback59

    My apologies on the spelling.

  • http://charlemagne-the-hammer.blogspot.com/ DerKrieger

    From Yahoo News (AP) Obama pushes nuclear energy to boost climate bill – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100131/ap_on_bi_ge/us_obama_nuclear

    What’s happening here is that Obama has given lip service to supporting nuclear power but only in exchange for GOP support for his climate bill. RINO’s like Grahamnesty will sign on in order to claim that they won something when in fact he will be duped, again, by the restrictions put in place that continue to make it nearly impossible to actually build and then license a new nuke plant. Meanwhile idiots like Goober Graham will have signed us all up for higher energy costs. He will be rolled because he, and RINO’s just like him, have allowed the Dems to establish the premise from which negotiations are to start. They will have allowed the Dems to define the center. This is dangerous foolishness.

    Quoting Graham – “I hope Republicans understand we have a once in lifetime chance, but in return we have to come up with emissions standards.”

    He’s an idiot and needs to be voted out of office.

  • teresakoch

    Went to the link on your personal blog, and tried to link to the page that tells about what the Dems are trying to do to game the nomination process; got an IE message that the website was declining to show the page (the page showed up for an infinitesimally brief second before the message appeared).

    Any chance that you have a screenshot of that page? It seems as if the Dems don’t want anyone to know what they are doing….

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/05/democrats-consider-new-presidential-nominating-process/

    I got the same problem that you did when I used IE, so it’s apparently a glitch that they’re having.

  • RedBeard

    …and it’s even less likely he will change course. Except in rhetoric, of course; he is, after all, an even better liar than Bill Clinton.

  • RedBeard

    Did he cloud up like he was about to cry?

  • Scope

    and since McCain is up for re-election next year, Graham is filling in for McCain’s support of Cap and Tax. Graham has long been a McCain lapdog. It doesn’t matter at all to him that he has been censured by the SC GOP twice for his support of Cap and Tax. He thinks that everyone will forget his faux paus long before then. Even though the Global Warming debacle has continuously been proven to be a hoax, Graham marches on with it, just as Obama does. They refuse to lose sight of all those $$$$$.

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/31168.html

    He supported McCain’s Amnesty plan. He was very critical of Justice Alito during his confirmation hearings, and, asked him out right if he was a “closet Bigot.” Then he turns around and votes in favor of Sotomayor’s confirmation.

  • gekster

    when I got web page not displayed, I hit back, and when the page re-appeared, I hit stop. “the red x on the top right.
    this worked for me.

  • bobojake
  • http://erickbrockway.wordpress.com/ Erick Brockway

    …has to be looked at thru the prism of him thinking eventually he’ll be getting everything he wants. If he’s dealing and making deals he’ll never keep up his end of it.
    He’s got to be appearing to be reasonable to weaken our RINOs into conceding something.
    Think Mao, or better, Sun Tzu; “All war is based on deception.”
    Also; “He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot, will be victorious.”
    We can’t ever think “he’s learning his lesson”, if anything he’s just adopting a new strategy to ram this stuff through.
    See, if he loses in 2012, he’ll still think himself victorious if he managed to push stuff through that we’ll never be able to undo.
    Obama has said that he would rather be a good one-term president than a moderate two-term one.

    To him, “good” = as far left as humanly possible.

  • mbecker908

    There was nobody around to oppose him.

    And yes, I’m saying that JD Hayworth is not a viable candidate, will get hammered by at least 30 points and every dollar spent on his campaign is a dollar wasted that could be spent on a winnable race.

    Want to beat Graham in ’14? We’ve got to cultivate at least one viable candidate starting now.

    Honestly, in Arizona in ’08 when Shadegg said he was retiring and got talked out of it somebody should have approached him about running this year. He could beat McCain.

  • jsmiddleton4

    I’m in AZ. I can assure you there is credible and wide spread support for losing McCain. Having said that IF McCain wins the primary we aren’t going to let our senate seat go to a Democrat cause we don’t like McCain. Hayworth however does have a legitimate shot.

  • pilgrim
  • mbecker908

    JD is about as popular as clap in a convent. He got beaten by Mitchell in a Republican leaning district because the voters are sick of him.

    You may live here, but you have no clue about AZ politics. JD was within 2 points in November in a Ras poll when nobody had thought about him for a long time. In the two months after that poll JD dropped to down 20 and McCain went from under 50 to over 50. And as soon as JD opens his mouth he’ll drop 10 more.

    Either Flake or Shadegg would have been credible candidates with essentially no baggage. JD needs at least three Amtrack specials to carry his bags and the fact that his mouth isn’t connected to his brain and all the media in Arizona are just laying in wait for him to make a complete fool of himself doesn’t bode well.

    JD is a dead man walking. Mitchell should be beatable this year, but if JD ran against him he’d lose to Mitchell by 20.

  • mbecker908
  • shadowmane

    is something Obama has become very good at doing. He’ll throw his whole party under the bus if it means him remaining President of the United States.

  • spainishirish

    We can assume:

    1. Obama is braced for everything from near Republican majorities to party flips in the House and the Senate this year, and has started to pivot.

    2. Obama realizes that if the House and Senate don’t flip this year, although the former seems quite possible, both will if he is, God forbid, re-elected.

    That should alarm us because it reveals a heretofore hidden pragmatism. But fear not. When you read between the lines from the SOTU and Baltimore, the following conclusions are reached:

    1. Obama believes the American people are stupid; and

    2. Obama really is an ideologue, which to give the devil his due is principled.

  • mbecker908

    You can find some detail re just why he will get pounded here and here for starters.

    If you would like to present some factual information on the race – and “I assure you” isn’t even a starter write a diary and we can have a discussion.

    Make sure you address the following though…

    • Arizona is a “purple” state not a “red” state.
    • The voters in Maricopa County REALLY don’t like him – personally.
    • ALL of the AZ media hate the guy.
    • He’s $100K in the hole, McCain’s got $5MM in the bank.
    • JD has no “big name” endorsements. McCain has Palin and will have Scott Brown.
    • Outside of Maricopa County JD is viewed as a total wack job.
    • JD’s lost 12 points to McCain just at the mention that he might run.
  • archer52

    He may turn a little, if pushed hard enough by the people behind him. But I’m not convinced most of what he bends with is actually nothing more than smoke and mirrors. He is who he is. He believes what he believes. Unlike Bill Clinton, a man surrounded by fans but still horribly lonely, Obama doesn’t suffer the need to be loved. He is an ideologue. Krauthammer sees that now, as do many others. A smart politician would move to the center, but Obama has proven to be neither very smart or really much of a politician. Now the people who propped him up in Chicago are both smart and politically savvy, but not Obama.

    If he were he wouldn’t have “mf”ed the Supreme Court (http://truthandcommonsense.com/2010/01/31/how-to-make-liberal-lawyers-throw-up-mf-the-supreme-court-on-national-television/) which is the quickest way to see any hope of your leftie agenda die a nasty death at the foot of the Court’s bench. Had he been smart he would have not said the commie comment in front of a camera. That will haunt him for years on radio and the Internet.

    (On a side note, the whole experiment with Obama has certainly shown the left where the weak spots are at. Just like in 2000 where they learned to position state officials in key spots, they will correct the problems they faced here. You can rest assured before the next “obama” moment, they’ll have regulated both the Internet and talk radio. It is a lesson Chavez is learning now and trying to address.)

    Will he move to the center to get two terms? Possibly. If he thinks that will allow him more time to get what he really wants- the fundamental reshaping of America. If he thinks that will not happen, I’m not sure he’ll shift. Like the scorpion in the fable the fox and the scorpion, he is who he is.

  • izoneguy

    One day, Obama stood on the side of a stream and asked the American people to carry him to the other side.

    ‘How do we know that you won’t sting us?’ the American people asked. ‘Because if I sting you, I’ll drown,’ Obama said.

    The American people thought about it and realized that Obama was right. So they put Obama on their backs and started ferrying him across. But midway across the stream, Obama plunged his stinger into the American people’s backs. As they both began to drown, the American people gasped,’Why?’

    Obama replied, ‘Because it is my nature.’

  • realskinny

    believe a Marxist ideologue like BHO would jettison unpopular agenda items when they are HIS agenda? Just asking. My take on the guy is he knows his congressional majorities can only get smaller and it’s this year or never.

  • wolfgang

    ….”Once a Communist, always a Communist” will prevail here.
    The urge to create innumerable collective farms and industrial communes is just too strong in this ABOMINATION and the tendency to ram specific pieces of unpopular legislation down the people’s throats, whether they approve or not, because its supposedly for their own good, will persist despite unfavorable electoral results.
    The first order of business for the newly elected Congress convening in January, 2011, should be the Impeachment of Barack Hussein Obama.

  • acat

    if Obama gets a new conservative congress, he will be forced to the right whether he likes it or not .. and if he can smile (no matter how much prozac that takes) he can get re-elected…

    Mew

  • http://slcliberty.blogivists.com randy streu

    when/if we take over this year, we need to start pushing a hard right (yet, common-sense) agenda, sold correctly to the people (instead of the namby-pamby, lousy communication jobs we’ve been seeing from the GOP recently), that the President won’t sign off on. I’m okay with a couple years of getting next-to-nothing done (except on defense) if it means we can paint Obama as an obstructionist lame duck.

  • Achance

    about gridlock and dissing him and a lot of race and see if they can assemble the same coalition of the young and the mindless that elected him and them last time.

  • Scope

    recently saying that if Bolshevicare can’t get passed in the Congress then they will pole vault in to get the legislation, you know that cram down is on the schedule. When they include language in the senate bill, saying that this legislation cannot be changed in the future, Obama thinks that his signature will be on the US as far as the eye can see.

    I wonder if Pelosi was tortured as a child.

  • Scope

    he doesn’t need any Democrat party. He has all the far left radical Czars he could ever need to rule the country.

  • DavidSage

    There will be an issue here and there that’s a gesture (like nuclear power) but I just can’t see a Clinton-like move to the center from a leftist like Obama.

    Bill Clinton became somewhat popular after making some drastic concessions to the right, and more importantly, the economy came roaring back.

    Even with Clinton’s pivot to the center, a roaring economy, and Newt Gingrich stepping in it on a regular basis, Clinton was still very beatable.
    Had Perot not been on the ballot and we had a slightly better Republican nominee, I think Clinton would have lost his reelection bid in ’96. Even with all those factors going for Clinton, he never could crack 50%.

    I think the mask has been permanently pulled off of Obama, I don’t see America ever again thinking he’s a moderate figure in politics.

  • Common_Cents

    Obama is convinced America is dumb and he has to speak directly to us to tell us the wisdom of his radical ideas. An ideological elitist. No way he makes any real legit move to the middle.

  • http://erickbrockway.wordpress.com/ Erick Brockway

    …with bills they’ll never pay off.
    So then is Teh Won trying to say to the GOP “We can do this easy, or we can do it rough…”?

  • http://itsaboutfreedom.proboards.com/index.cgi#general bigalsouth

    By the end of the 2008 presidential primary season, the war in Iraq was largely over. Presidential candidate Barack Obama, when put on the spot by Bill O?Reilly, was forced to admit that it ?succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated.? (PJ Media)

    However, when pushed to admit whether Obama would still have supported the surge, after the success was undeniable, Obama could not bring himself to say that he was wrong. THAT, my friends, is an Ideologue. Obama moving to the center? Not likely.

  • USNJIMRET

    seem always to over reach.
    And I don’t think anyone on the not left side of the political spectrum, and maybe even a few on the just slightly left side, is really surprised that the Nobama/Pelosi/Reid triumvirate has over reached.
    I’m just not certain that even most people who detest the left expected the amount of over reach.
    Or that when it resulted in what it has so far, and is likely to cause in the mid-terms, they would behave as if nothing had happened.
    And THAT is kind of frightening, all by itself.
    It’s almost as if certain folks are aware of something that the rest of us aren’t, and thus don’t worry about their future.

  • 6eorge Jetson

    Is Now Deemed Changable by Congress”

    If the Dems are going to be that stupid, call them on it.

  • sdan

    moving anywhere to the right. I do see him having a mental breakdown when he figures out he won’t get everything he wants being removed from office because of mental defect and Biden moving to the right. Of course with Pelosi waiting in the wings as next in line if I were Biden I’d hire a food tester and someone to watch my back 24/7.