Obama, Change From What?
Obama has truly mastered the way to run for President as a Democrat. Run way far to the left during the primary. Make all of the wackos happy. Take in their money. Get the nomination. Then move closer to the middle, even changing your position on a few issues. Basically, do whatever it takes to convince average Americans that you are not nearly as much of a leftist as you really are.
He has already changed his tune on FISA, gun rights, and now war funding. His recent announcement to continue faith based initiatives is not really a flip-flop. It’s just something he conveniently forgot to tell the crazies, while campaigning in the primary.
So you all thought he was different, that he wasn’t like all of the other politicians? Bunch of dumbasses!
This really funny post by Newscoma, pretty much exemplifies the fringe left’s reaction to the realization that Obama is running a Presidential campaign.
I thought, naively, that I might get a Camelot with either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama this year.
I won’t.
It’s just politics as usual.
Heh! Yes it is, ‘Coma.
Given how rare it is for a POTUS to actually govern as they campaigned, no one should act shocked.
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On this, at least, we agree. Obama seems to be running a “disappoint the base” campaign of late. Of course, this type of behavior is far from unique to Democratic candidates. Bush ran in 2004 and especially in 2000 as a moderate, but then took narrow electoral victories and pretended that he had a “mandate” to do all sorts of conservative stuff. I can only hope that Obama does similar in 2008 — runs as more “moderate” than he actually winds up being in office.
But yes, I’ve been very disappointed in Sen. Obama’s newfound love of political expediency.
Also, it’s worth noting that during the primary season, McCain ran substantially to the right of his previous record, a point you guys complained about (because you didn’t trust its sincerity) incessantly… So again, neither party has a monopoly on politically expedient pandering.
McCain has done the same thing too, but we expected that from him, since he wasn’t “change”. What amazes me is how mad everybody was about the gang of 14 and especially the immigration bill, and how soon Republican voters forgot about that stuff.
About Bush doing a bunch of “conservative stuff”, what are you talking about specifically? I think we might have some different definitions for conservative.
It might not match your definition of “conservative,” but starting a spurious war, cutting taxes without cutting spending (and during wartime, to boot!), funneling tax dollars to religious organizations, advocating against well-established science, pushing anti-abortion legislation, and pushing us closer to a true surveillance state are all consistent with modern conservatism, and are all not the sorts of things one would expect a “moderate” “uniter” to be engaging in.
I’m sure I could think of even more examples if I stopped and thought about it for a while…
P.S. Democratic politics-as-usual would indeed represent a “change” from what we’ve had over the last 7 years.
[…] Krauthammer, is saying essentially the same things I said in this post, which is that Obama, the guy who was supposed to be different, is not unlike any other recent […]