americanideal.org Blog

It’s a shame it took a blogger (God bless him or her) to dig up a seven-year old interview of Obama that the LEM (Liberal Establishment Media; there is nothing mainstream about them) didn’t know existed.  It’s a shame, also, that the questions Obama answered in that interview have NEVER BEEN ASKED OF HIM BY THE MEDIA, ANY OF THE DEBATE MODERATORS, NOR EVEN THE MCCAIN CAMPAIGN. 

The questions are central to the role of government in the United States of America and to the function of the Presidency.  With all the promises both candidates have made, with all the things that Obama says he will do (most of which are unrealistic and outside the realm of the presidency), nobody has ever challenged him with the simple question, “Is that the role of the President as defined in the Constitution?”

The US Constitution is the job description for the President, yet there has been no, and I mean no, discussion of the Constitution by either campaign.  Whoever wins this thing will swear an oath, in fact, to “defend and protect the Constitution of the United States of America.”

Isn’t it only fitting that the candidates be required to know and understand the Constitution as a pre-requisite to being elected, so that they know what it is that they will be swearing to defend and protect?

Barack Obama apparently thinks the Constitution is inadequate. Here is what he said on a Chicago Public Radio station in 2001:

OBAMA: If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay.
But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted. One of the I think tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change and in some ways we still suffer from that.
MODERATOR: Let’s talk with Karen. Good morning, Karen, you’re on Chicago Public Radio.
KAREN: Hi. The gentleman made the point that the Warren court wasn’t terribly radical with economic changes. My question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place – the court – or would it be legislation at this point?
OBAMA: Maybe I’m showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn’t structured that way.
You just look at very rare examples during the desegregation era the court was willing to for example order changes that cost money to a local school district. The court was very uncomfortable with it. It was very hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.
The court’s just not very good at it and politically it’s very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally. Any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts. 

To Obama, the Courts could come up with a way to justify positve rights (”what the federal or state government must do on your behalf”), but he doesn’t think they will.  So it has to be done at the grass-roots level of community organizing. Hello ACORN!

Obama believes that the government must provide “redistributive” justice. If it can’t be forced through the courts, it should be enacted through legislation.  This is a fundamentally radical view of human rights and of the American experiment in ordered liberty.  It is at odds with the vision of America’s founders and even with a great many Americans to this day.  Obama’s view would be consistent with the notion of a “right” to health care, which he advocated in the last debate; a “right” to housing; a “right” to education, etc.  This view of rights not only guarantees that a person cannot be obstructed in trying to obtain those goods, but also that the government must actively provide them to every citizen.

The President’s most fundamental duty is to uphold and defend the US Constitution.  Will the citizens of the United States elect a man to the presidency who does not believe in the very document he will swear to uphold? 

Another lie from Barack Obama:  When questioned by the Chicago Sun Times after winning his US Senate seat in 2008, he unequivocally denied that he would run for President in 2008.  Full interview here http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/obama/1113161,cst-nws-obama110404.article.

Reminds one of another slick Democrat politician who said he wouldnt’ run for President in the middle of his term as governor of Arkansas.

Add this to Obama’s broken pledge to abide by campaign fund raising and spending limits.  How do you know when to trust a liar?

CNN’s Campbell Brown (the first member of the Liberal Establishment Media to do this, that I know of) spells it out with astonishing candor and irrefutable evidence, that Barack Obama broke a promise to abide by campaign spending limitations, simply because he knew that he could raise unprecedented amounts of money.  It seems victory was more important to Mr. Obama than honor: Obama: “I will not run for President in 2008″ http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/28/campbell.brown.obama/index.html.

Yet another distasteful irony of this election, as “Ken” points out in a comment on another post, that if McCain loses, it will be in large part because of the very regulations he was responsible for passing into law.  McCain is abiding by the restrictions that he advocated on campaign finance and spending, while Obama is not. 

Even more ironic, too, that it was always the Republicans that were excoriated in the press for attempting to “buy” elections with their extravagant spending.

Where is the criticism of Obama for shattering all spending records for a presidential election, for literally buying this election in the most brazen manner?  This is after promising that he wouldn’t.

You have to feel kind of sorry for old McCain, who has been so skillfully and easily duped by Chicago-style politics.  There is something endearing and sincere in McCain’s appeal to honor.  There are things which his strong sense of integrity will not let him do; and some of these are very frustrating to his supporters. Going after Obama with regard to Jeremiah Wright is a case in point.  Yet you have to respect a man who would rather lose an election than lose his honor, even if he defines that honor differently than we would.

To Obama and his base of support, honor went out of fashion with knights in shining armor.  Their sense of duty is to one thing only:  power.  And power can be achieved only through victory.  And victory, therefore, must come at any cost.  What’s wrong with a little ballot-box-stuffing and illegally gotten campaign cash?  Not a damn thing if it will help us win.  Honor? Integrity? Belief in binding principles that are more important than any one person?  Those are the illusions of fools . . . fools who lose elections.

A telling piece by Jonathan Martin in the Politico explains why there will be no swift boat coming to Naval hero John McCain’s aid:

 http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14811.html

No big money donors are willing to fund the independent groups that can run a massive ad campaign linking Obama to Jeremiah Wright, for example.  This is because they expect McCain to condemn them for doing it; they don’t believe that his campaign will know how to capitalize on it; and they are not sure it is worth the investment because, if McCain should win, will he govern that much more conservatively than Obama?

This campaign is fraught with ironies, delicious to Dems, nauseating to the GOP.

One is the irony of ideology:  Obama is steeped in extreme leftist ideology and is successfully running as a moderate.  McCain is steeped in pragmatic moderation and is attempting to run, unsuccessfully, as a conservative.

Obama has successfully packaged a Trojan Horse approach, with the LEM’s (Liberal Establisment Media. I refuse to call them mainstream; don’t cede the middle ground to them) help to be sure.  The radical left is thrilled with Obama, because they know he is one of them.  But they know he has to run more moderately in order to win, and they are willing to look the other way while he tacks to the center.  The mainstream Democrats and that amorphous group of left-leaning, generally non-ideological voters don’t know or refuse to believe that Obama is a radical leftist. Thus he has cobbled together a winning coalition:  keeping the left wing base in the fold and bringing the middle along.

On the other hand, McCain cannot keep the Republican base happy, because he has never been and is not now a movement conservative.  He is a patriotic and slightly right-of-center pragmatist.  Yet McCain can’t even get credit for that.  He used to be the darling of the “moderates” and independents, yet they are flocking to Obama, a radical leftist in his ideology.  In short, Obama is winning because he is perceived as middle of the road (when he is not), and McCain–the real moderate–is losing because he is perceived as being right wing (when he is not).

On the abortion issue, Obama comes from the most ideologically extreme pro-abortion camp.  This should not be a surprise, given that he has been steeped in far-left, radical, communist ideology from his earliest days. 

Watch this:

http://americaschoicenow.com/

If Obama wins and Democrats gain in the House and Senate, the way the pundits expect, be prepared for a leftward lurch to this country the likes we haven’t seen since the Great Society and maybe the New Deal. 

See the Wall Street Journal’s analysis:  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122420205889842989.html

McCain’s best argument may be purely defensive.  Give me the White House as the last bulwark of defense against the coming storm of liberalism about to be unleashed on America through the Congress.  Remember good old gridlock?  We want you back, big time.

Not that McCain is the best defense we could have, with his penchant for caving to Democrat demands, but he is the only defense we have at this point. 

Vote McCain, shutter the windows, pray for the best, and head to the basement (don’t forget the duct tape).

Maybe when the storm is over, there will be enough of America left to be worth preserving . . .

Here’s the speech McCain should give about the economy and the stock market that you will never hear:

“My friends, Senator Obama and the other Democrats think that they can gain political traction with class warfare rhetoric that has worked for them all too often in the past.  I am not going to stand by quietly and let them get away with pitting Americans against each other, artificially, unjustly, and repeatedly.

“Democrats love to demonize Wall Street, and pit it against “Main St.”  To them, Wall Street is a small group of filthy rich robber barons that manipulate corporations to enrich themselves and punish the rest of us, we who live on “Main St.”

“To Senator Obama and the Democrats, corporations are bad, excessive, make too much money and should be punished for it.  If this is true, my friends, why aren’t they celebrating the dramatic decline in the stock market of recent weeks?

“If corporations are bad and should be punished, what is more punishing to them than a 20, 30, or 40% decrease in their value? 

“Democrats don’t even seem to understand what the stock market is.  Or more likely, they do understand but cynically misrepresent it in their lust for political power.  You see, my friends, the stock market is where ownership of America’s publicly traded corporations is bought and sold, by means of shares, every single day.

“When our corporations are believed to be profitable, productive, and headed in the right direction, their value to buyers increases. When this happens, their share prices will rise on the open market.  When their share prices rise, the stock market indices, like the Dow Jones Industrial Average and NASDAQ, will rise. 

“My friends, who owns the corporations?  It’s not just the big shot executives. Do you know who owns the corporations?  You do!

” You see, my friends, when you have investments in the stock market, in the form of retirement funds, IRA’S, education accounts, pension plans, and the like, you have ownership shares in America’s corporations.  And when these corporations are profitable, your shares will increase in value. When your shares increase in value, the value of your retirement fund, pension plan, IRA, education account, nest egg, will also increase in value.

“This is why the decline in value of the stock market has been treated as bad news for most Americans.  Why then do Democrats demonize corporations?  Why do they want to punish them?  Senator Obama should be happy that the stock market has declined.

“I am not afraid to admit that I want to reduce taxes on corporations.  I am proud to admit that. When we reduces taxes on corporations, the corporations will be more valuable.  When corporations are more valuable, their owners will benefit.  Who are the owners?  YOU ARE!

“If you have as much as one mutual fund, you have shares in probably many many corporations.

“Senator Obama loves to demonize the oil companies.  Why?  Oil is the lifeblood of our economy.  Who is happy about high gasoline prices?  Not you. Not me.  What would putting extra taxes on the oil companies accomplish?  It would raise their cost of doing business and decrease their value.  All this would to is make the price of a gallon of gasoline even higher and make the value of oil company stocks lower.  And who loses when oil company stocks go lower?  The owners of the oil companies.  And who are the owners of the oil companies?  YOU ARE!

“Yes, I want America’s corporations to flourish, including oil companies.  When our corporations flourish, the owners benefit. Who are the owners?  Everyone that has even one mutual fund, or a retirement plan, pension fund, IRA, education fund, or a simple nest egg.  Who are the owners?  YOU ARE!”

What if Obama were just another white guy?   This is one of those questions that should have come to mind a long time ago, but didn’t in my case, maybe because it makes one feel a bit uncomfortable at first.

But it is a fair question and not at all racist.  Pretending that this is a race-neutral election is the fantasy that big media and the Democrats want us to believe. 

But we know it isn’t true.  The same big media and Democrats treat the “black vote” as a monolithic block that will go for Obama by a 95-5 margin.  If so, this is not a race-neutral election.

If it is to be assumed that blacks will vote for Obama because he is “one of their own” and that’s deemed OK by the media, the self-annointed arbiters of political taste in this country, doesn’t that make anybody uncomfortable?  Isn’t that very assumption (and the reality that apparently accompanies it) a kind of racism? 

How many whites, also, are voting for Obama because he is black?  Another discomfiting question, but I am sure plenty of people are.

Now you can vote for anyone or against anyone for whatever reason you want.  That’s nobody’s business.  You can vote against McCain because he’s old or is on the shortish side or can’t lift his arms above his head or against Obama because he has big ears. I don’t care.

My point is, if Obama were a white Democrat politician from Chigago, in his late 40’s, who had a couple terms as a state senator preceded by a few years of community agitation, preceeded by a prestigious Harvard law degree, who was now only in his first term as a US senator, would he have even gotten any consideration by voters in the Democratic primary process?  I think we all know the answer to that question.

We are all expected to ignore–in the spirit of good taste as deemed by the political and media elites–that Obama is the first affirmative action presidential candidate.  He has gotten this far mostly because of his racial heritage.

In short, it is fine and even noble to vote for him because he is black, but shameful to vote against him for that same reason. 

My opinion:  it is equally shameful to vote for or against a candidate because of is race.

For those inclined to vote against Obama because he is an inexperienced, over-reaching street organizer schooled in the Saul Alinsky, Noam Chomsky, Ward Churchill ideology and techniques of grass-roots agitation, not to mention the fact that his policies are repugnant to us, don’t allow them to make you believe you are a racist.  You don’t like Marxists, whether black, white, or in between.

Think of this: What would the polls look like if 90% of white people were going to vote for McCain because he is white? 

It would be a landslide and it would be disgusting.  And it wouldn’t represent a country I would care to live in.

As much as I am sickened by the prospects of the coming Obama presidency, the loyal Republican in me partly feels that McCain is getting what he deserves.  How can this be?

The McCain campaign made a fundamental error early on, and they haven’t recognized it, nor can they at this late date do anything about it, not that they would want to.

McCain decided to accept the Democrat premise that President Bush is a total disaster and try to run away from and even against George W. Bush.  This strategy hasn’t worked, nor can it be expected to. 

Here’s the crux of the problem.  When trouble strikes, Democrats circle the wagons and rally around each other.  Republicans eat their own young.   When Monica came out, Dems said Bill Clinton would never do such a terrible thing. The whole accusation was a right wing conspiracy, remember?  Then when it turned out to be true, and Bill Clinton admitted it, and admitted that he lied (under oath) about it, the Dems said, well it doesn’t matter; it’s only about sex; it’s his personal business; and his policies are wonderful for the country.

Democrats didn’t throw Bill Clinton under the bus, after his disastrously unsuccessful and hugely unpopular push for Hillary-Care; after the 1994 mid-terms when Republicans clobbered the Dems; even after Monica and impeachment.  Dems held their ground and always, always insisted that Bill Clinton was a great president.  Yes, he did Monica, but . . . Yes this, but that. Yes one thing, but another.

Republicans, the whole lof of them, the spineless ones in Congress, the so-called neo-con pundits who urged Bush on to war with Iraq, and yes McCain, have never even tried to prop up Bush’s popularity.  Even if they don’t like Bush (and clearly McCain has a personal vendetta from the 2000 election and who knows what else), they should have realized that as Bush goes, so goes the Republican party.

If McCain had bolted the GOP and ran as an independent this year, say against Obama and a Mitt Romney running as the Republican, he would probably win!  And he could have ripped Bush to shreds in the process.

But he chose to stay a Republican and run as a Republican.  Whether he likes it or not, McCain is squarely on board the rapidly sinking USS George W; and instead of frantically trying to bail water out of the thing, he’s smashing more holes in the hull.

It didn’t have to be this way.  President Bush’s approval rating is, what, in the 20’s?  My goodness, how hard would it be to have brought that up in to the 30’s, maybe near 40.  I am not talking about even half of the people approving.  Remember, the guy got 50% of the vote in 2004 and had approval ratings in the 80’s after 9-11.

Republicans, including McCain and Palin, should meet every insult thrown at Bush with a strong endorsement of the good things President Bush has accomplished.  How about the tax cuts that gave people control over their own money and did lead to economic growth, the creation of jobs, and record government revenue?  How about the miracle that has happened in Iraq?  McCain wants to take credit for the surge?  Fine, there is plenty of credit to share, and Bush had to make the decision and stick to it.  How about the appointment of outstanding constitutionalists like Roberts and Alito to the supreme court?  How about, most importantly of all, keeping us safe from another attack for the past seven years!

You don’t have to resort to false praise or pollyannish hyperbole to give credit to George Bush for those accomplishments.  They are significant and striking and deserve to be lauded.  All the Republicans needed to offer was a little balance, something like “I know that George Bush is not the most popular president right now, and who knows what’s behind all that.  I know he has made some unpopular decisions, and frankly I have disagreed with him strongly in some areas.  But President Bush is a man who doesn’t let polls change his principles, and for that I admire him.  And he has succeeded in keeping our country safe since 9-11; giving much needed tax relief to American families; and turning the situation in Iraq around remarkably.  For all of those achievements, he should be given his due.”

A relentless campaign of consistent statements like the above from Republicans across the board could have perhaps propped Bush’s approval up a few notches. And maybe those few percentage points of difference would have translated to a few percentage points of difference in McCain’s favor.  And in presidential elections, which have often been decided by the narrowest of margins, a couple percentage points can be the difference between victory and defeat.

Palin blew it when she piled on Bush in the VP debate.  She gave Biden the ammo that he turned around and shot McCain with.  She should have offered the kind of measured defense of Bush that I offered above. 

You see, McCain’s weakness is that Obama/Biden are right about one thing:  McCain is promising more of the same as Bush in certain areas.  And there is nothing wrong with that, because McCain agrees with Bush on those things that Bush did that were right and popular (tax cuts, the surge in Iraq, qualified justices, etc.). 

In accepting the premise of the Dems’ and the media’s position, McCain is not only running away from President Bush (to whom he is ultimately tied in the eyes of the voters) he might find himself running away from the presidency as well.