PrintMarch 11, 2011
Is Obama a radical or a typical Democrat
A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Michael Medved posits that President Obama is not a radical, but rather is one of the host of FDR's followers who have taken over the Democratic Party:
In what sense does Obama count as more radical than FDR, the patron saint of the modern Democratic Party?
Where does he advocate government intervention and expansion more sweeping, costly or constitutionally questionable than the programs of the New Deal...
President Obama not only conforms to the big government, tax-and-spend traditions that have characterized his party for nearly a century; he stands squarely in the center of the Democrats' current coalition.
Medved notes that Hillary Clinton or John Edwards might have pursued the same agenda as Obama. Indeed, Ms. Clinton did her senior college thesis on Saul Alinsky.
To Medved's point, the 111th Congress just ended was dominated by such long-time liberal lions as Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, David Obey, Russ Feingold, and Barney Frank, all of whom have worn the same path that Obama now strides.
Medved also notes the mainstream political pedigrees of Obama's cabinet appointments.
To make that point, however, Medved perhaps overlooks such fellow travelers as self-described communist Van Jones, Mao-philosopher Anita Dunn, "queering education" Kevin Jennings, rationing romantic Donald Berwick, and Chavez-champion Mark Lloyd, among others.
Radicals aside, Obama's "typical Democrat" appointments are a fertile field as well: including CO2-controller Lisa Jackson, drilling banner Ken Salazar, foreign policy failure Hillary Clinton, economic failure Tim Geithner, nation-of-cowards Eric Holder, and Janet "Incompetano," to borrow Mark Steyn's term.
Rush Limbaugh has in recent days questioned whether Republicans should campaign against Obama's philosophy or only his policies. Are Obama's Marxist philosophy and his background and associations to be off limits once again?
Medved last month cautioned against Limbaugh's argument that Obama is trying to weaken America, and Medved now cautions that we stick to the Democratic policy issues.
Medved asserts that the effort to defeat Obama in 2012 should focus on Obama's record as a typical Democrat:
Republicans need not despair that President Obama fails to conform to the hackneyed (if groundless) charges of radicalism. They will find the president easier to beat when they re-adjust their attacks to portray him as typical rather than radical.
The problem with Mr. Obama isn't that he functions far outside the Democratic mainstream. The real problem is that mainstream itself, a toxic stew of dysfunctional and discredited notions that have flopped reliably whenever they've been employed.
Since the Democrats have brought us ObamaCare and $1.6 trillion deficits, environmental extremism and the resulting energy shortages, rising prices for gas and food and a three-year and counting bout with unemployment and economic malaise, the ‘toxic stew' of Obama's Democratic regime offers much to run against.
We are cautioned too that Obama remains personally popular, yet who among us likes to be conned, victimized by a smile and a voice.
Obama ran as a centrist and governs as anything but. The President forced ObamaCare down an unwilling public's throat, using budget-fudging, legal foot-dragging and political waivers to make it stick.
Obama has called rural Americans bitter clingers and tea partiers racist, and has demonized almost everyone, from insurers and bankers to doctors and bondholders, angrily denouncing just about anyone who disagrees with him on the issue of the day.
What's not to like?
The President's "fundamental transformation" translates by the dictionary to changing the essential nature of our nation. That phrase alone sets Obama apart, and should be fair game in the coming campaign.
