Friday, October 26, 2012

"How Sarcasm and Insult Took Over the Democratic Party"

"Obama, whom National Journal ranked the most liberal senator in 2007, exemplified movement progressivism. But he also had a talent for conveying liberal ideas in an inoffensive, positive way.  Obama took pains to avoid ideological conflict. He was about hope and change, not insult and blame...His first Gallup approval rating as president was 68 percent...The untold story of the last four years is President Obama’s squandering of that good will...The Obama coalition, piece by piece, has been disassembled. All that remains is the antiwar, anti-Republican core of the Democratic Party...The most important part of the story is the gradual unmasking of Obama—not as a Kenyan Marxist, but as a thoroughly typical liberal Democrat who believes there is no trouble in the world not created by George W. Bush.  The Obama team came in thinking United States foreign policy could be fixed simply by doing the opposite of whatever Bush had done. What they found instead is that Bush’s policies are difficult to overturn because they are not as unreasonable or as superfluous as his opponents had thought...It turns out the people who supposedly knew better did not, actually, know better."