What I do know is that the sequestration fight has once again shown us that Barack Obama has a defective public character and a post-modern attitude toward truth. He simply makes things up as he goes along. It looks to me that there are few things he will not do, and fewer things he will not say, in order to undermine his opponents and advance his progressive cause. That is something that is deeply injurious to American politics and America itself.
- since of course this is exactly how I've been describing Obama for several years now - but actually it's not a sad vainglorious self smile I'm after here - it's rather an expression of how surprising I find it that conservatives have been so slow in figuring the man out. Now, I do tend to be Hobbesian in my cynicism so it's not asking much of me to see the bad in someone and to dispatch this damning opinion with alacrity - and so maybe I have an advantage in this game - but, still, conservatives have been disturbingly slow in forming a serviceably unsentimental understanding of the man who wants to ruin them - or maybe more accurately the man who very much wants to help them ruin themselves. Just last week I heard the putative savior Rubio characterize Obama in a way that made it clear he still felt deference was due and giving Obama the benefit of the doubt viz his motivations warranted - give Obama the benefit of the doubt and he will trample you to death, and as he's trampling you to death he'll be giving a melifluous speech on how the country must rise above petty politics and partisanship and blame, and somewhere Oprah will be wiping away a tear with fat fingers and elsewhere a young, idealistic scribe will be rolling phrases from the speech over and over in his head as if they were scripture and still elsewhere a down on his luck citizen will be fumbling in a frayed pocket for the new coin of the realm, food stamps, and as he's stacking up boxes of macaroni and cheese and six packs of coke he'll look up at a TV and see the smiling face of Dear Leader and think to himself 'yes sir, yes sir' - and all the while Obama will have his foot on your neck stamping the life out of you.
Reminds me of how during the election Romney and his handlers, at a time when he was receving a lot of bad press, expressed shock at how unfair the coverage was - they seemed genuinely shocked by this - and I remember thinking if at this late date you really haven't figured out that, one, the media doesn't want you to win, and two, Obama will exploit this advantage without mercy or shame - if you have not yet figured out that everything Obama does is predicated on the belief that what ever message he wants put out there will get put out there by his media cohorts and that he will ruthlessly put out there any message he feels he needs to put out there in order to win regardless of whether or not that message contains any truth whatsoever - if you have not yet figured all this out and accordingly come up with a strategy to mitigate damage and address vulnerabilities thereof, then you don't have a chance. It's over.
But is it over over? For good reason Obama and his minions feel the GOP is indeed on the verge of falling hopelessly behind, is too broken and confused to remain viable on the national stage. This isn't a pipe dream on their part, it's within reach - unfavorable demographics and media bias are daunting obstacles to overcome in the best of times and now is not the best of times for republicans even though opportunities for counter attack do somewhat abound - but proximately hapless as republicans seem right now there's a good chance there's gonna be a lot of talent on the stage come the 2016 GOP primary which would amount to a complete reversal of sad 2012 field, and that augurs well indeed - still, it's not the candidates that will be problematic come 2016, it's the process itself that hurts and which increasingly forces republican hopefuls in directions that are not at all beneficial viz a national campaign - and Obama and his maenads know this and that's why they want to stoke partisan rancor, not ameliorate it - they want the GOP angry because they feel that will divide them - and as long as the press and media cooperate and the electorate remains uninformed and vulnerable to cheap persuasion and populism Obama can play this double game of antagonizing the right while pretending to be reasonable - and I don't know how all this gets sorted out in your favor if you're a republican.
[having said all that I will say it's a good sign Boehner didn't fold on sequester - although still a lot of game left to be played there - and GOP still lacks as far as I'm concerned anyone who can explain what they're doing and why in terms that manage to impugn the president without sounding mean spirited - so that's a problem - and likewise there's as yet no one for GOP who can talk about taxes in a way the average idiot voter can grasp - you have to be able to explain why raising taxes on the successful is pointless pandering that ultimately does more harm than good - the average voter is supposedly sick and tired of petty politics - well, raising taxes on the rich is petty politics and the GOP really needs to find someone who can sell that message without sounding like they're merely trying to defend rich people - I thought Paul Ryan could be that guy but, promising as he may be as a one day Speaker or possibly maybe as a governor, I'm just not reading broad national appeal from him the way I thought I might]
