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Obama's Rank Demagoguery Appalls
Pretty Much Everybody Part One of Four By Dave
Andrusko I grant you, it's not directed at us, but that's beside the point. You and I and every American ought to be appalled by Obama's cynical and calculated determination to inject the rankest kind of demagoguery into the political bloodstream less than a month out from the mid-term elections. Obama's TelePrompter now routinely includes an evidence-free attack on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce based on a made-up-out-of-whole-cloth report from a partisan Democratic "think-tank." The charges are so bogus even the New York Times, CBS's Bob Schieffer, and NBC's Chuck Todd are appalled. The specifics need not detain us long. They have to do with Obama's snarky charge that certain companies that do business overseas are using "huge sums" of "foreign money" allegedly "to influence American elections." However, "a closer examination shows that there is little evidence that what the chamber does in collecting overseas dues is improper or even unusual, according to both liberal and conservative election-law lawyers and campaign finance documents," writes the New York Times' Eric Lichtblau. "In fact, the controversy over the Chamber of Commerce financing may say more about the Washington spin cycle -- where an Internet blog posting can be quickly picked up by like-minded groups and become political fodder for the president himself -- than it does about the vagaries of campaign finance." Schieffer confronted White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod on his "Face the Nation" program yesterday. "I guess I would put it this way. If the only charge, three weeks [from] the election that the Democrats can make is that somehow this may or may not be foreign money coming into the campaign, is that the best you can do?" According to the Heritage Foundation "Morning Bell" blog, "Axelrod went on to contend that it is the responsibility of those the White House accuses to prove they aren't breaking the law." This is so irresponsible that on MSNBC's "Daily Rundown" this morning, "NBC's Chuck Todd described Axelrod's answer as 'McCarthy-esque.'" And for good measure there is this from Baltimore Sun columnist David Zurawik, who may have put it best. "So much for hope and change; this is the politics of fear, slander and divisiveness on the eve of an election that looks as if it could deliver a damning verdict on the first two years of the Obama administration." [And just so there's no confusion, "White House officials acknowledged Friday that they had no specific evidence to indicate that the chamber had used money from foreign entities to finance political attack ads," Lichtblau reported.] Let me make two concluding points, both obvious, but both worth repeating. First, Obama and his band of pro-abortion Democrats are scared silly. There are layers on top of layers of reasons the electorate is unhappy. But what initiated the chain-reaction is when Americans began to gag at having the abortion-laden, rationing-promoting ObamaCare stuffed down our collective throat. Second, you will hear that there is a kind of "return to the norm"--that the fortunes of pro-abortion Democrats, while grim, are getting better. Not so. How can you tell? For one thing, the political class that once embraced Obama to its bosom is attacking his with as much frenzy as it once showered him with praise. TIME Magazines' Mark Halperin is so angry his column slipped off the tracks. While dutifully blaming Obama's opponents for not "compromising" (as if that has ever been a part of Obama's M.O.), Halperin wrote, "With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters. This view is held by Fox News pundits, executives and anchors at the major old-media outlets, reporters who cover the White House, Democratic and Republican congressional leaders and governors, many Democratic business people and lawyers who raised big money for Obama in 2008, and even some members of the Administration just beyond the inner circle." That was his second paragraph. It gets worse from there. And as for the predictable slew of "comeback stories" we can anticipate, several bloggers inclined to be sympathetic to Democrats reminded us in the past week that this is the same narrative we heard in 1994 just before pro-abortion President Bill Clinton and the pro-abortion leadership of the House and Senate had their heads handed to them in the first mid-term election of Clinton's first term. In fact 1994 was a complete wipeout for Democrats. Let me end where with the same cautionary note I finish every story. None of the good things that can come to pass will come to pass if anyone let's down their guard. To that end, see One-Stop to "See Where the Candidates Stand on Life" at www.nrlc.org/News_and_Views/Oct10/nv100810part3.html and "The 2010 Election Month" at www.nrlc.org/NewsToday/2010ElectionMonth.html. |
As
someone who been on the receiving end of a fair share of pro-abortion
brickbats, I counsel young people coming into the Movement that public
policy/politics isn't beanbag. If you choose to go into the public arena, be
forewarned that the anti-life crowd's stock in trade is playing fast and
loose with the truth. As I anticipated this only makes the next generations
of pro-life leadership even more eager to compete in the public square.