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Posts Tagged ‘Barak Obama’
January 3rd, 2011 at 5:09 pm
Demography Is Destiny; So Too Running Mates?

With much of the 2012 presidential election coverage centering on Republican candidates, it’s worth noting – as this blog from the National Interest does – that President Barack Obama posted lopsided support among African-American and Hispanic voters during the 2008 campaign (95% and 67%, respectively).  Those numbers will likely grow as Hispanics continue to increase their share of the voting base.

So, what’s a WASP-ish GOP frontrunner like Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, or even Sarah Palin to do?  Any contestant eyeing a general election takedown of Obama-Biden (or even, heaven forbid, Obama-Clinton) should make travel plans for Santa Fe, New Mexico.  There newly inaugurated Governor Susana Martinez can teach them how to frame a winning position on illegal immigration: “It’s not about the Mexican population.  It’s about the Mexican border.”

That message, combined with Martinez’s career as a state prosecutor and traditional values stances, earned her 30% of the Hispanic vote in a heavily Democratic state.  It’s the kind of success story that just might earn her a place as the next Vice President of the United States.

April 20th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Praising the Salt Institute

Thank heaven for the Salt Institute!  Surely the Framers of the First Amendment and America’s first sociologist, Alexis de Tocqueville, would appreciate collections of individuals banding together to inform the public – and the government – of the benefits of salt.  With today’s headlines proclaiming an FDA crackdown on sodium in food, now is the time to read about salt, its uses and benefits and the current issues in focus.

True, the assault on individual freedom and responsibility by the Obama Administration is startling, as evidenced by this quote from one of its friends in academe:

Most salt eaten by Americans — 77 percent — comes from processed foods, making it difficult for consumers to limit salt to healthy levels, experts say.

“We can’t just rely on the individual to do something,” said Cheryl Anderson, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who served on the Institute of Medicine committee. “Food manufacturers have to reduce the amount of sodium in foods.”

Of course what she really means is making food manufacturers reduce the amount of sodium in foods by federal fiat.  This kind of bureaucratic paternalism will only be made easier with implementation of ObamaCare.  But as long as there are industries willing to energetically (and stylishly) present consumers and policy makers with resources from organizations like the Salt Institute, the Republic – and sanity – stands a chance.

January 28th, 2010 at 7:31 pm
More on POTUS vs. SCOTUS

Those watching last night’s State of the Union Address may have noticed that a third of the Supreme Court wasn’t in attendance. It couldn’t have been an ideological statement because the absentees included Associate Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. After President Obama castigated the Court’s recent ruling on national television, ABC’s Jake Tapper reports that insult could lead to the other six members finding better things to do during next year’s speech.

At the end of Tapper’s piece is an intriguing quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt about his thoughts while getting sworn in by the Chief Justice for his second term as president.

After his second inaugural, FDR recalled to an aide, when “the Chief Justice read me the oath and came to the words ‘support the Constitution of the United States’ I felt like saying: ‘Yes, but it’s the Constitution as I understand it, flexible enough to meet any new problem of democracy—not the kind of Constitution your Court has raised up as a barrier to progress and democracy.’”

Tapper doesn’t comment on the quote, but it’s worth mentioning that FDR’s deviation from the Constitutionally-prescribed oath says a lot about the Executive’s abuse of power up through Obama. Is there any doubt FDR’s current successor feels any differently about his ability to judge how flexible our fundamental laws are?

December 23rd, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Liberals Taking Aim at “The One”

Of all the criticism streaming in from the liberal blogosphere, it would be hard to find one as exasperated with President Obama than Emory professor Drew Westen’s recent piece for the Huffington Post. In the midst of a prolonged screed against the man he voted for last November, Westen manages to cogently distill the Left’s frustration with The One:

Like most Americans I talk to, when I see the president on television, I now change the channel the same way I did with Bush. With Bush, I couldn’t stand his speeches because I knew he meant what he said. I knew he was going to follow through with one ignorant, dangerous, or misguided policy after another. With Obama, I can’t stand them because I realize he doesn’t mean what he says — or if he does, he just doesn’t have the fire in his belly to follow through. He can’t seem to muster the passion to fight for any of what he believes in, whatever that is. He’d make a great queen — his ceremonial addresses are magnificent — but he prefers to fly Air Force One at 60,000 feet and “stay above the fray.”

I’ll leave others to analyze the current president’s penchant to be prim when true negotiating grit is needed. And besides the backhanded compliment to Obama’s immediate predecessor, there isn’t much a conservative could add. It’s almost as if liberals are finally realizing what the Right has been saying since he became a serious contender for the White House: the man has no signature achievement other than promoting himself. If comprehensive health care “reform” legislation reaches his desk it won’t be because of his ideas or political capital – a point made well by Westen:

It’s the job of the president to be in the fray. It’s his job to lead us out of it, not to run from it. It’s his job to make the tough decisions and draw lines in the sand. But Obama really doesn’t seem to want to get involved in the contentious decisions. They’re so, you know, contentious. He wants us all to get along. Better to leave the fights to the Democrats in Congress since they’re so good at them. He’s like an amateur boxer who got a coupon for a half day of training with Angelo Dundee after being inspired by the tapes of Mohammed Ali. He got “float like a butterfly” in the morning but never made it to “sting like a bee.”

Then again, perhaps Obama is playing rope-a-dope with his liberal base. As long as he can claim to be the first president to deliver “universal” health care, his legacy will be secure. After all, it’s all about his, right?