Obama Rejects Obamaism
When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.
I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.
more from this sap:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/opinion/brooks-obama-rejects-obamaism.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Obama sparks middle-of-road rage
The moderate elite isn’t, by definition, an angry bunch, but President Barack Obama’s pivot from calibrated centrism to soak-the-rich liberal populism has tapped a vein of middle-of-the-road rage and centrist angst.
Over the past two weeks, Obama has convincingly channeled FDR, winning over suspicious liberals, even if many suspect he will eventually return to his old, compromising ways.
Yet to a small, but influential cadre of moderates, it’s political apostasy — an Obama-led return to the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s, when tax-hiking liberals drove the Democratic Party to the powerless margins of politics.
And to some higher-minded moderates, led by New York Times columnist David Brooks, Obama is sacrificing his 2008 vision of a post-partisan presidency and purple national map on the altar of Democratic base politics.
When the president said the unemployed couldn’t wait 14 more months for help and we had to do something right away, I believed him. When administration officials called around saying that the possibility of a double-dip recession was horrifyingly real and that it would be irresponsible not to come up with a package that could pass right away, I believed them.
I liked Obama’s payroll tax cut ideas and urged Republicans to play along. But of course I’m a sap. When the president unveiled the second half of his stimulus it became clear that this package has nothing to do with helping people right away or averting a double dip. This is a campaign marker, not a jobs bill.
more from this sap:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/opinion/brooks-obama-rejects-obamaism.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Obama sparks middle-of-road rage
The moderate elite isn’t, by definition, an angry bunch, but President Barack Obama’s pivot from calibrated centrism to soak-the-rich liberal populism has tapped a vein of middle-of-the-road rage and centrist angst.
Over the past two weeks, Obama has convincingly channeled FDR, winning over suspicious liberals, even if many suspect he will eventually return to his old, compromising ways.
Yet to a small, but influential cadre of moderates, it’s political apostasy — an Obama-led return to the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s, when tax-hiking liberals drove the Democratic Party to the powerless margins of politics.
And to some higher-minded moderates, led by New York Times columnist David Brooks, Obama is sacrificing his 2008 vision of a post-partisan presidency and purple national map on the altar of Democratic base politics.
