I belly laugh when I hear Obama's a Socialist

The Fiscal Times:  Obama: The Covert Conservative Liberals Have to Love

In a recent column, I argued that Barack Obama has in practice governed as a moderate conservative. Right wingers were, of course, incredulous, and insisted that he is a far left socialist no matter how thin the evidence. The truth is that Obama has always been moderately conservative – a fact that has been obvious to liberals dating back to the beginning of the 2008 campaign. It would be clear to conservatives as well if they weren’t so blinded by their partisanship and occasionally got their news from an unbiased source.

It’s not now remembered, but when Obama initially ran for president he wasn’t the preferred candidate of even the traditionally liberal African-American community. Many remembered Bill Clinton as their friend and someone whose economic policies reduced the black unemployment rate to its lowest level in recent memory – less than half of what it is today. Consequently, many African-Americans were initially inclined to support Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination, not Obama.

Many blacks were also disturbed by Obama’s biracial heritage and wondered whether he was “black enough.” Al Sharpton accused Obama of “grandstanding in front of white people” when he urged nonviolence in the wake of a racially charged court verdict. Jesse Jackson said that Obama talked down to black people when he said that they bear some responsibility for their condition, and Andrew Young joked that Bill Clinton had probably dated more black women than Obama had.

White liberals were no less concerned about Obama’s persistent deviations from their dogma. On June 25, 2008, Sen. Russ Feingold criticized him for supporting legislation giving telephone companies immunity for permitting government surveillance in national security cases, as well as for opting out of federal campaign funds, thereby undermining liberal support for campaign finance reform.

On June 30, 2008, Arianna Huffington assailed Obama for abandoning his base, saying it was politically counterproductive. “When Obama kneecaps his own rhetoric and dilutes his positioning as a different kind of politician, he is also giving his opponents a huge opening to reassert the McCain as Maverick brand,” she complained.

The next day, Markos Moulitsas, founder of the widely-read Daily Kos web site, penned a bitter attack on Obama for betraying liberals, taking swipes at left-wing groups and other offenses. “There is a line between ‘moving to the center’ and stabbing your allies in the back out of fear of being criticized,” Moulitsas said. “And, of late, he’s been doing a lot of unnecessary stabbing, betraying his claims of being a new kind of politician.”

On July 13, 2008, the New York Times published an article quoting a number of liberal activists who were deeply disappointed that Obama was giving short shrift to their issues. The article was entitled, “Obama Supporters on the Far Left Cry Foul.”

Simultaneously, some conservatives began warming to Obama. In a July 15, 2008, column, James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal editorial page praised his moderate views on race, calling Obama the Mikhail Gorbachev of the civil rights movement.

Fareed Zakaria, in a July 18, 2008, column for Newsweek, praised Obama for his foreign policy realism. “What emerges is a world view that is far from that of a typical liberal, much closer to that of a traditional realist,” he wrote. “It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the historical schools of foreign policy, Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist.”

Even arch supply-sider Larry Kudlow professed admiration for Obama’s pragmatism when he wrote, “Lo and behold, Team Obama is moving toward the supply-side and pivoting toward the political center on key aspects of its tax policy.” He was impressed that Obama had promised not to raise the tax rate on capital gains any higher than 20 percent, a promise he has kept.

Soon, a large number of prominent Republicans and conservative intellectuals were publicly endorsing Obama. Following is a short list:

Ken Duberstein, Ronald Reagan’s White House chief of staff;

Charles Fried, Reagan’s Solicitor General;

Ken Adelman, director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency for Reagan;

Colin Powell, Secretary of State under George W. Bush;

Scott McClellan, Bush’s press secretary;

And Jeffrey Hart, former senior editor at National Review magazine and speechwriter for Reagan and Richard Nixon;

Radio talker Rush Limbaugh was so alarmed by conservative defections to Obama that he read the riot act to his “ditto heads.” He said it was “maddening” that Obama “is moving right” and sounding as conservative on many things as McCain. To counter these inroads among conservatives, Limbaugh handed down his marching orders: “We have to portray this guy as inexperienced, far leftist, despite what he’s saying about moving to the center.”

According to exit polls, Obama ended up with 20 percent of the conservative vote in 2008.

After the election, many conservatives who thought that Obama’s centrism was a campaign ploy were shocked when he followed through with appointees that could – and often did – hold positions in Republican administrations. Looking at Obama’s national security team, foreign policy hawk Max Boot professed himself “gobsmacked.” Most of them, he admitted, “could just as easily have come from a President McCain.” On economic policy, many conservatives expressed comfort with Obama advisers Paul Volcker, Larry Summers, Austan Goolsbee, and Jason Furman.

Fred Barnes of the right-wing Weekly Standard spoke for many conservatives when on December 8, 2008, he said: “It’s not that Obama, despite his unswervingly liberal record in the Senate, turns out to be a pragmatist. The point is he’s pragmatic (so far) in one direction – rightward. Who knew?”

Even Jennifer Rubin, now the resident right-winger at the Washington Post, wrote on January 5, 2009, “So far it’s hard to imagine McCain would have been doing more than the incoming Obama team seems to be proposing…to further some key center-Right policy aims.”

No doubt, many of these conservatives would say today that they are disappointed that Obama didn’t follow through on his centrist promise. Nevertheless, it’s clear that Obama’s conservatism, which I believe is fully evident in his policies as president, has long been there to see by those willing to be honest with themselves.

Obama is many things, a Marxist/Socialist he is not

Obama Doesn't Want a Progressive Deficit Deal (Rolling Stone):

One expects the debt-ceiling mess to involve a lot of ostentatious chest-pounding on both sides, for despite the fact that this is a deadly serious issue – the fact that we're even considering incurring an intentional catastrophe via a default is incredible, a testament to the bottomless stupidity inherent in our political climate – this whole debate is primarily an exercise in political posturing.

That Republicans are holding up what should be a routine, if unpleasant, decision to raise the debt ceiling in order to portray themselves as the uncompromising defenders of the budget-balancing faith (a howling idiocy in itself, given what went on during the Bush years) is obvious to most rational observers. It's the obvious play for the lame-duck party entering an election year, and they're playing it, with the requisite hysteria.

But what is becoming equally obvious, to both sides, is that the Obama White House is using this same artificial calamity to pitch its own increasingly rightward tilt to voters in advance of the 2012 elections.

It has been extremely interesting in the last weeks to see observers on both sides of the aisle make this point. Just yesterday, the inimitable New York Times conservative Ross Douthatlisted Obama's not-so-secret rightward push as a the first in a list of reasons why the Republicans should dig in even more, instead of making a sensible deal:

Barack Obama wants a right-leaning deficit deal. For months, liberals have expressed frustration with the president’s deficit strategy. The White House made no effort to tie a debt ceiling vote to the extension of the Bush tax cuts last December. It pre-emptively conceded that any increase in the ceiling should be accompanied by spending cuts. And every time Republicans dug in their heels, the administration gave ground.

The not-so-secret secret is that the White House has given ground on purpose. Just as Republicans want to use the debt ceiling to make the president live with bigger spending cuts than he would otherwise support, Obama’s political team wants to use the leverage provided by those cra-a-a-zy Tea Partiers to make Democrats live with bigger spending cuts than they normally would support.

Douthat makes this observation, then argues that the Republicans should recognize Obama's hidden motive and hold out for an even better deal. It will then be a race to see which party can abandon employment in favor of deficit reduction faster. He writes:

Why? Because the more conservative-seeming the final deal, the better for the president’s re-election effort. In that environment, Republicans have every incentive to push and keep pushing. Since any deal they cut will be used as an election-year prop in 2012, they need to make sure the president actually earns his budget-cutting bona fides.

 This is interesting because just last week, the liberal opposite of Douthat at the Times, Paul Krugman, came to the same conclusion:

It’s getting harder and harder to trust Mr. Obama’s motives in the budget fight, given the way his economic rhetoric has veered to the right. In fact, if all you did was listen to his speeches, you might conclude that he basically shares the G.O.P.’s diagnosis of what ails our economy and what should be done to fix it. And maybe that’s not a false impression; maybe it’s the simple truth.

One striking example of this rightward shift came in last weekend’s presidential address, in which Mr. Obama had this to say about the economics of the budget: “Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.”

Krugman seems to believe that Obama has basically purged all of his real economic advisors and is doing what Bush did on foreign policy -- engaging in complex and portentous policy initiatives at the behest not of experts, but political advisors. Just as Bush had Karl Rove telling him when and how to launch military invasions and drop bombs on unsuspecting foreign human beings in order to establish electoral credentials, Obama might be playing chicken with the budget for the benefit of undecideds in Florida and Ohio:

Some of what we’re hearing is presumably coming from the political team, whose members seem to believe that a move toward Republican positions, reminiscent of former President Bill Clinton’s “triangulation” in the 1990s, is the key to Mr. Obama’s re-election. And Mr. Clinton did, indeed, rebound from a big defeat in the 1994 midterms to win big two years later. But some of us think that the rebound had less to do with his rhetorical move to the center than with the five million jobs the economy added over those two years — an achievement not likely to be repeated this time, especially not in the face of harsh spending cuts.

The blindness of the DLC-era "Third Way" Democratic Party continues to be an astounding thing. For more than a decade now they have been clinging to the idea that the path to electoral success is social liberalism plus laissez-faire economics – in other words, get Wall Street and corporate America to fund your campaigns, and get minorities, pro-choice and gay marriage activists (who will always frightened into loyalty by the Tea Party/Christian loonies on the other side) to march at your rallies and vote every November. They've abandoned the unions-and-jobs platform that was the party's anchor since Roosevelt, and the latest innovations all involve peeling back their own policy legacies from the 20th century. Obama's new plan, for instance, might involve slashing Medicare and Social Security under "pressure" from the Republicans.

I simply don't believe the Democrats would really be worse off with voters if they committed themselves to putting people back to work, policing Wall Street, throwing their weight behind a real public option in health care, making hedge fund managers pay the same tax rates as ordinary people, ending the pointless wars abroad, etc. That they won't do these things because they're afraid of public criticism, and "responding to pressure," is an increasingly transparent lie. This "Please, Br'er Fox, don't throw me into dat dere briar patch" deal isn't going to work for much longer. Just about everybody knows now that theywant to go into that briar patch.

Obama is a Socialist?

“Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You’re thinking of Jesus.” 

I'm a Little Confused. How About You?