PrintDecember 29, 2010
The Chameleon Who Ate the Canary
Mixing metaphors should be discouraged, but in the case of President Obama, two pictures are worth a thousand words. Obama's handlers are working to rebrand the ever-adjusting president for his 2012 run, who paradoxically just received most of his wish list items during the lame duck session.
From Commentary Magazine:
Just a month after suffering a midterm-election drubbing, he has bounced back with a renewal of the Bush tax cuts, repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and now ratification of New START. Oh, and he also issued his AfPak review, which endorsed the counterinsurgency plan being implemented by General Petraeus.
[snip]
Considering that he is probably the most liberal occupant of the Oval Office, he has done a surprisingly good job of moving to the center, as witnessed by the Republican votes he has managed to garner on DADT and New START
And that's not all. Obama hasn't just become post-partisan; he's also remaking his image from Christian-lite to serious church-goer. While on his vacation in Hawaii, Obama went to Christian church services at the local Marine base and partook of communion dipped in wine. This latest religious photo-op coupled with his reading of Reagan's biography leads me to wonder if this is the first stage of the third phase of his campaigning season which began in 2007.
The president slightly mirrors St. Paul who said he had to be all things to all people--in order to draw them to Christ. But Obama's goal doesn't appear to be as pure as Paul's. If he intends to go after the Christian right by attempting to look like them, he will have to do much more to convince them he's on their side.
This reminds me of the infamous Saul Alinsky who Obama has followed with his socialist policies. Alinsky was a Marxist whose main goal was to topple the evil capitalists by using community organizing as the means. Looking around the blue collar landscape, he set his sights on the sizable voting bloc of Irish Catholics and sold them on the benefits of unions.
Getting Catholics to accept Marxism was essential for Alinsky to usher in his grand plan of socialism for all of America. However, in a videotape on YouTube.com, Alinsky can be heard condemning monks in monasteries, calling them "cruddy bastards." How did he gain the cooperation of a group of people whose very existence depended on those who prayed in obscurity, but labored to preserve the written word and classics through the centuries? Alinsky took on the working man's pathos as his own, thereby directing attention away from his true character.
Obama's conservative empathizing is just in time for the new 112th Congress, and the start of the 2012 campaign season. He's probably feeling pretty impressed with himself, having just swallowed some Republicans before they knew what hit them. He's going to try and eat some more come January. Will the status quo GOP canaries see what he's up to and fly away from him before it's too late?
You can read more of Ann Kane's insights on her blog: www.potterwilliamsreport.com
