Obama the Republican
Bruce Bartlett has a column at the American Conservative (Obama Is a Republican) which is getting a lot of attention today (and rightfully so, in fact). His points about the deficit, in particular, ought to be paid attention to.
I will say, however, that I find all the attention to his thesis a bit amusing, insofar as I remember a blog post with a similar title from over three years ago: Obama: Moderate 90s Republican? (In fairness, the basic thesis was not unique to that post either).
(Also the PoliBlog post noted in that link from 2011 has been re-created here).
I used to tell my right wing uncle, an avowed Bush lover, that Obama is the best Republican president since Reagan. I was only joking.
…or was I?
Interesting article. The comment thread–the more important part of this sort of article to me–were, well,,,colorful, yeah, that’ll do it. The main thing that I would note is that the commentariat at TAC is better spoken and more intelligent sounding than say, Jenos or Eric Florak, but that’s not a very high bar to jump.
@Just ‘nutha’ ig’rant cracker:
Nailed it.
This dude sounds like that bearded guy from the Matrix:
Woulda been better minus a phrase or two and a couple commas.
And all your base are belong to us.
(True story: I did not know, until a few days ago, that TAC was co-founded by Pat Buchanan. I thought that was….interesting.)
Yep, it nailed it. Obama’s policies fit into the Eisenhower range. I especially liked the paragraph in the article:
“I think Cornell West nailed it when he recently charged that Obama has never been a real progressive in the first place. “He posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit,” West said. “We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency.””
I’d say Obama never even posed as a progressive. He was the most conservative of the 3 main candidates for the 2008 Democratic nomination (and Edwards the most liberal).
Republicans are terrible on the deficit, but year after year in the Obama administration, the deficit goes down. I’d say that shows Obama isn’t a Republican at all.
Been saying this for six years now. Mr. Obama was never a leftie, he’s a moderate, middle-of-the-road guy. That didn’t matter to Republicans, but it never seemed to quite penetrate to a lot of Democrats. I hear Dems sounding disappointed that Obama hasn’t been a dove. The man ran openly on droning the crap out of Pakistan, he was never a dove.
@James Pearce: Yeah, Pat Buchanan as the founder is, well…ironic come to mind.
Interesting side bar on Pat Buchanan: During the late 80’s I was in the Peace Corps in West Africa and got most of my news via short wave radio. If conditions were right I could get broadcasts from the US. For the most part these were religious broadcasts but occasionally I would get these incredibly paranoid racist christianist broadcasts. I’m talking the kind of stuff that Timothy McVeigh was spewing. And at least twice I caught Pat Buchanan on one of these shows. As I remember he was fairly careful about what he said himself but there he was on the line (or in the studio) for many minutes as some crazy religious nut job talked about mud people and race mixing and jew conspiracies and whatnot. Ol’ Pat never said boo to disagree.
I read the TAC fairly often and have often wondered shy a slime ball crazy racist like Buchanan got so much column space. Now I know.
@James Pearce: I took cracker’s suggestion and read some of the comments at TAC.
indeed. The usual conservative nonsense in erudite clothing. (Strikes me as appropriate for TAC, except for Bartlett.) The guy you quote kept that up for 1600 words. In a blog comment. Lordy.
The fact is that Obama is a centrist Democrat who would have loved to work with moderate Republicans to craft pragmatic legislative solutions. This is the theme of his book ” The Audacity of Hope.”
The Republicans decided that this was not the way to legislative success and decided on all-in opposition and to paint Obama as a Kenyan Muslim extremist who was ruining the country with Marxist policies. It was nonsense, of course, but the Obama and the media let the Republicans get away with that and were slow to counteract the relentless right wing propoganda campaign. The failure to respond to Republican propoganda, coupled with what turned out to be an inadequate economic stimulus, set the stage for the massive conservative backlash in 2010.
I’ve been typing that Obama is more Conservative than Reagan, on this very forum, for years.
Nice to be vindicated, I suppose.
I wonder if Doug or any other conservative commenter is ever going to admit that the ACA is not some socialistic takeover of the health care market , but
My guess is , sadly, never. We love our delusions and never want to admit we are wrong on the Internet.
I realize that it is not Obama’s nature to be confrontational – a trait that is consonant with being a political moderate, a centrist – but there are times when I whish he would have told Republicans, at certain key junctures, to ‘eff-off.
@stonetools:
buhwahahahahahahahahahahhaha
Is Obama the REAL CONSERVATIVE that Florak has been seeking all these years?
@anjin-san:
Haven’t you noticed that Obama is black?
Obama could do every single thing friggin’ that Florack wants and needs…and still he’d be black…so Florack wouldn’t believe it possible.
Obama’s blackness is the ONLY thing that makes Republicans hate him. If he were white, they would call him the Reagan Re-Incarnate and liberals/progressives/Democrats would loathe him even more than they do now.
Dude just can’t win for trying.
@Nikki: Good job racist asshole
@bandit:
If I might …
Where is she wrong concerning Republicans?
Is it that Republicans hate him for MORE than just being black?
@Nikki:
No, they also hate him for the D after his name.
Republican doesn’t equal conservative, Steve.
Indeed, all you’ve done is confirm what I’ve been saying all along about what’s wrong with the GOP,.