Freedom Line Blog

Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal provides a terrific service with an entire column filled with Barack Obama’s bald-faced flip-flops.

A sampling:

“I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program”—Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama, June 2003.

“I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter”—President Obama, August 2009.

…

“Leadership means that the buck stops here. . . . I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit”—Sen. Barack Obama, March 2006.

“It is not acceptable for us not to raise the debt ceiling and to allow the U.S. government to default”—President Obama, July 2011.

…

“We have an idea for the trigger. . . . Sequestration”—Obama Office of Management and Budget Director Jack Lew in 2011, as reported in Bob Woodward’s “The Price of Politics.”

“First of all, the sequester is not something that I’ve proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed”—President Obama, October 2012.

…

“Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive”—President Obama, April 2009, in France.

“We have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms”—President Obama, April 2009, in Trinidad and Tobago.

“Nothing Governor Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing”—Barack Obama, October 2012, on whether he went on a global apology tour.

…

“If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition”—President Obama, 2009.

“We’ve got a long way to go but . . . we’ve come too far to turn back now. . . . And that’s why I’m running for a second term”—President Obama, October 2012.

Read it all here.

From Charles Krauthammer on the Right to Peggy Noonan in the middle, denunciation of President Barack Obama’s handling of the war in Libya is expected.  But tough talk from a reliable liberal like Eugene Robinson?  Now, that’s progressive.

Robinson has done his best to keep up with Obama’s ever-shifting views on military involvement in Libya.  No more.  Today, Robinson apparently can’t interpret the blizzard of mealy-mouthed talking points flying out the White House press office.  So, he’s asking for a little clarity:

So what the hell are we doing? I realize that President Obama and his advisers have answered this question many times, but I feel it’s necessary to keep asking until the answers begin to make sense.

What’s that you say, Mr. Robinson?  Obama isn’t making sense?  Welcome to the club.

We don’t know whether this is positive news or depressing news, but Barack Obama has flip-flopped once again.  Now, he says he will meet with British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward after all, just days after stating that he was not interested in such a meeting.

We suppose this is good news in the sense that if Obama is willing to meet murderous dictators like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “without preconditions,” then he should at least be willing to meet the CEO of the company desperately attempting to stop the worst oil spill in American history.

On the other hand, it demonstrates once again that a pledge from Obama is about as dependable as a teleprompter during a rainstorm.  His broken promises include a solemn vow not to raise taxes on anyone earning over $250,000, to comply with public campaign finance restrictions, to exclude lobbyists from his administration and to close the Guantanamo detention facility.  Many of Obama’s promises were ill-advised when offered, but how can businesses, foreign allies or anyone else gain any certainty from a man who reverses pledges he made only days earlier?

It’s a terrible prospect for the economy, which relies upon expectation stability, and international security to have such an unreliable White House occupant.