Turnabout Is Unfair!
Great whine, I mean one, from Paul Krugman at NYT:
“I am in this race because I don’t want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.” So declared Barack Obama in November 2007, making the case that Democrats should nominate him, rather than one of his rivals, because he could free the nation from the bitter partisanship of the past.
Some of us were skeptical. A couple of months after Mr. Obama gave that speech, I warned that his vision of a “different kind of politics” was a vain hope, that any Democrat who made it to the White House would face “an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false.”
So, how’s it going?
Sure enough, President Obama is now facing the same kind of opposition that President Bill Clinton had to deal with: an enraged right that denies the legitimacy of his presidency, that eagerly seizes on every wild rumor manufactured by the right-wing media complex.
This opposition cannot be appeased. Some pundits claim that Mr. Obama has polarized the country by following too liberal an agenda. But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing.
Ha. A little ironic, coming from a guy whose big complaint with Obama is that he isn’t socialist enough. What’s great is how well it works if you sub in “Bush,” ”1999,” ”Republican” and “enraged left” for “Obama,” ”2007,” ”Democrat” and “enraged right.” The difference is Bush actually did engage in extensive bipartisanship and didn’t attempt to ice out the opposition, right up to the end.
Is it just me or is anyone else astonished that this Nobel laureate economist can’t do basic math? Not that big a surprise a guess, when you consider that the Nobel crowd gives out peace prizes to terrorists and end-time alarmists.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:44 am Comments (7) on Friday, August 14, 2009
7 Responses to “Turnabout Is Unfair!”
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August 14th, 2009 at 10:15 am
Memo to Krugman: Bipartisanship does not include running roughshod over the opposition by passing near trillion dollar “stimulus” packages laden with goodies for your lefty base and increasing the deficit to obscene levels, taking over private corporations and handing them over to your union friends, pushing monstrous cap & trade schemes that will massively increase energy costs for everybody, and leading the charge for a federal takeover of the health care system and its accompanying 17% of the economy. Oh yes, and announcing that up next is comprehensive immigration reform.
Also, helpfully explaining that everybody will just have to go along with your plans to remake the country into a socialist utopia because “I won” does not generally encourage bipartisanship.
August 14th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Is it just me or is anyone else astonished that this Nobel laureate economist can’t do basic math?
Nothing Krugman does or says astonishes me anymore. He jumped the shark long long long ago.
August 14th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing.
Naturally, because we’re all just a bunch of ignorant, racist rednecks who don’t know what’s good for us, and don’t have the grace to shut up and let our betters do… whatever it is they want to do.
As far as I’m concerned, the Democratic Party’s (and Obama’s) behavior is epitomized by that video clip of Barbara Jackson-Lee taking a phone call in the middle of her constituent’s question at a town hall meeting. And that’s the image that’s going to stick with me when I go to the voting booth in 2010.
August 14th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
[...] Turnabout Is Unfair! [...]
August 14th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
[...] Health Care on Life Support: How a sure thing became epic fail In the 1990’s, Bill Clinton made a play for one of the largest sectors of our economy. His health care reform imitative was beaten back by a combination of insurance industry pressure and public outcry over a complex system designed by lawyers working behind closed Washington doors. It almost made him a one term president. “I am in this race because I don’t want to see us spend the next year re-fighting the Washington battles of the 1990s. I don’t want to pit Blue America against Red America; I want to lead a United States of America.” – Sen. Barack Obama in November 2007 [...]
August 15th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
There was a time when Krugman had some original contributions to thought … but the obvious mendacity of his columns made me despise the man many years ago. I don’t care that he disagrees with my politics, I despise how willing he is to deceive for cheap partisan advantage.
August 16th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
For a man who writes reasonably well, and allegedly has a pretty good education, it’s amazing how little, if anything, of substance he offers.
I can only conclude that he gets paid by the word, and hopes to make up in volume what his work lacks in substance..