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January 24, 2011
The Civility Charade
There's a movement afoot, led be Democrats, to have "bipartisan seating" during tomorrow's State of the Union speech. We're supposed to think this kumbaya moment will be a good thing and lead to greater civility.
What a load of bunk.
It's all fake bipartisanship and fake civility. Before the shell casings had even hit the floor after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, the left unleashed a torrent of hate and vitriol on Sarah Palin, but also conservative talk radio and Fox News, and the Tea Party movement. Mad that they had lost the Nov 2010 elections, they decided that this was the time to get even. Their objective was to silence Palin and shot down the conservative media outlets that had led the charge against Obama and the Democrats.
The civility charade is in the same vein. The liberals are still spewing their vitriol in congress and on the airwaves. It's only conservatives that must obey the new mandate.
It's also an attempt to divert us from the issues. The Republicans in Congress want to scale back Obama's agenda, and the Dems are desperately trying to stop that from happening. Polls show that as many as 60 percent of the American people want ObamaCare repealed. The more people hear about ObamaCare the more they dislike it
Obama's Mandela Moment
January 22, 2011
Victor Davis Hanson
...the current rise (in Obama's popularity in the polls) is exclusively a direct result of three interrelated phenomena: 1) the tragic January 8, 2011, Tucson shootings; 2) the hysterical left-wing scapegoating of everyone from the Tea Party to Sarah Palin for the violence; and 3) the sudden emergence of a sober and judicious Mandela-like Obama, quite admirably calling for calm on all sides -- while suggesting simultaneously that the horrific killings had no connection with the right wing, but also that the horrific killings offer an appropriate moment to reconsider all political zealotry in general.
In the ensuing ten days, Obama's polls and approval have skyrocketed.
However politically brilliant all of this was, it remains in some sense quite morbid, in a creepy sort of never-waste-a-tragedy sense. The reaction to the killings almost instantly blotted out information about and concern for the dead and maimed. Yet in this entire confusing media circus, questions simply were not only not answered, but in fact never raised...
How can a president subtly distance himself from the macabre and revolting behavior of his left-wing base while simultaneously editorializing on unhinged invective in general (e.g., without an embarrassing extreme, there is no occasion to call for moderation from others)?
Why did five days of presidential silence follow the shootings (so unlike instant editorializing about the Mutallab and Hasan incidents), when the likes of Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Andrew Sullivan, Sheriff Dupnik, and the New York Times rushed in to scavenge political capital amid the carnage?...
And why not some therapeutic confessional of past (and in many cases quite recent) presidential culpability (e.g., the president's own metaphorical use of knives, guns, enemies, punishing, kicking ass, relegation to backseat, get angry, getting in their face, hostage takers, trigger fingers, tearing up)?
The way ahead
We all know what is coming in 2012 -- the most well-financed, Wall Street-subsidized, vitriolic camping in modern memory, in which Obama's rivals will be metaphorically reduced to caricatures of racist, selfish, and cruel nativists. The 2011 Tucson speech will have about as much resonance with Obama's impending campaign style as the 2004 oration affected his 2004-9 political behavior.
Rhetoric in the new age of tolerance
And finally, why not an iota of presidential follow-up when in nanoseconds Obama's own progressive supporters returned to form and took up the old successful hate tropes? Rep. Cohen (D-TN) was soon comparing conservative opponents to Nazis in their Goebbels-like propaganda that likewise would, we were to believe, result in a Holocaust-like denial of basic human compassion. Columnists in Slate were back to the old Jonathan Chait-style ("I hate George Bush. There, I said it") of declaring their unabashed loathing for political opponents ("Why I Loathe my Connecticut Senator"). All that was left was the reemergence from his Atlanta peace center of a smiling Jimmy Carter, quoting scripture as he might yet again remind us that the elder Bush was "effeminate," Vice President Cheney was a "militant," the younger Bush was the "worst" president, and Israel is an "apartheid" state.
Yup, 2012 is going to be ugly, folks, so hang onto your seats. If they're this bad now, imagine how it'll get if they think Obama will lose.
Posted by Tom at January 24, 2011 10:00 PM
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Comments
Meanwhile, BHO has invoked Ronald Reagan -- to promote Obama's agenda, of course.
Posted by: Always On Watch 
at January 25, 2011 6:50 AM
Yeah. Sarah Palin was the real victim here. It's all about her. If only she would take Barbara Bush's advice
TLGK
Posted by: The Loop Garoo Kid at January 27, 2011 2:44 PM
As regards the comment in the article above: "Rep. Cohen (D-TN) was soon comparing conservative opponents to Nazis in their Goebbels-like propaganda that likewise would, we were to believe, result in a Holocaust-like denial of basic human compassion".
I found this somewhere online: "National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) called for short, Nazi". That first word is pronounced "natzi-oh-nal-soz-ee-al-eest-ishe". I wondered why Hitler'a party was called "Nazi", now I know.
Mr. Cohen is obviously a Jew by his surname (Cohen being the highest class descended from the priests Moses and Aaron). He might have had relatives that had known the Goebbels-like jack boots on their necks. He sees a certain lack of compassion in the way the extreme right-wing conservatives react to legislation that others think is for the common good.
Mr. Cohen doesn't want to see that kind of ugliness that once brought down a country, then a whole continent. What is it when an American woman says "if we can't get what we want with ballots, we will do it with bullets?", citing the second Amendment. What does she mean, that she would like to see another Revolution, another Civil War? I don't think she will get many takers. People on both sides like to talk tough, not realizing the fear they instigate, and so far it is just talk.
France and England took sides, one for those who wanted independence and one for the others who were satisfied with the status quo. Who would take sides for one or the other of our two warring ideologies? The Russians, the Chinese? This time both of them are godless socialist regimes. If one or the other prevails, there would be no freedom of religion or the right to bear arms, etc. here if they could force changes.
I do find the talk on the extreme right much too hawkish: "we should just turn those deserts into glass", "let's shoot the illegals and n---- on welfare", just from my "respectable" neighbors, friends, and relatives.
Even the Republicans of quality, like the Bush matriarch, wishes Palin would be quiet (as do Gingrich and Rove, who I have been disappointed in but I respect their intellect which is miles above Palin's, not even to speak of Bachman), but it is a free country, and all anyone can do is watch the dust-up and see what comes out in the wash. People aren't all that loyal to either party sometimes, they go with the one that they think will be friendlier to their pocket book.
We need real civility, and the two parties have balanced each other out so far, our Constitution prevents one from taking over permanently like dictators do in other countries where 2 percent roll in luxury and the rest live on bare subsistence.
I was listening to the CEO of a big "American" corporation, and when he was asked what America could do to have him bring jobs back here, he clearly let it be known that he not only wanted the lowest paid non-union labor without benefits, no regulation, no taxes, etc. just like overseas (he forgets the Chinese subsidize their businesses and laborers, and education, health care, housing for workers).
How that CEO can continue to call himself an American and his company American is beyond me. He is head-quartered here, that is all. He still likes living here I guess because it has not turned into a third world country like those he does business with, but how long can we hold out? What is the benefit to us there? I see his ideology as treasonous. With people like him, we don't have to worry that much about the Taliban, since he and others like him have the power to really destroy us by the millions.
Emilie
Port Orchard, WA
Posted by: Emilie at January 27, 2011 6:40 PM
If you don't want to like Sarah Palin, TLGK, don't like her. I don't want her to run for president myself. But the torrent of hate unleashed at her after the shooting of Rep Giffords was unwarranted to say the least.
Posted by: Tom the Redhunter at January 27, 2011 7:58 PM
