Posted by
On the Right on Friday, July 04, 2008 1:55:05 PM
Shock #1: Obama wants money, and scads of it. What the Times forgets
to mention is that Obama the Reformer doesn’t just want to raise a lot
of money, but that he also wants to avoid any limit on spending it.
I don’t want to rain any more disillusionment on the Times, but that’s
really the bigger part of the betrayal on reform, and hardly any of the
media has mentioned it.
Shock #2: Obama won’t obstruct a bipartisan compromise that got 80
votes for cloture in the Senate. It would have been a lost cause
anyway — Russ Feingold and Chris Dodd only got 13 other votes for the
filibuster — but also, Obama doesn’t need the Code Pink/MoveOn vote any
longer. In fact, this sends a clear signal that Obama considers them a
millstone rather than a life preserver at this stage of the campaign.
Besides, where else will they go — to Nader? How well did that work in
2000?
On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find
ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obama on two other issues:
the death penalty and gun control.
Their description of these shifts as “perplexing” provides some
unintentional hilarity. What’s perplexing about this? The Times is
out of the mainstream on both issues, as is the Left in general. Obama
wants voters in the middle now, so he will change his principles like
he does his lapel pin, as Charles Krauthammer notes in his column today, “A Man of Seasonal Principles”:
You’ll notice Barack Obama is now wearing a flag pin.
Again. During the primary campaign, he refused to, explaining that he’d
worn one after Sept. 11 but then stopped because it “became a
substitute for, I think, true patriotism.” So why is he back to
sporting pseudo-patriotism on his chest? Need you ask? The primaries
are over. While seducing the hard-core MoveOn Democrats that delivered
him the caucuses — hence, the Democratic nomination — Obama not only disdained the pin. He disparaged it. Now that he’s running in a general election against John McCain, and in dire need of the gun-and-God-clinging working-class votes he could not win against Hillary Clinton, the pin is back. His country ’tis of thee.
In last week’s column, I thought I
had thoroughly chronicled Obama’s brazen reversals of position and
abandonment of principles — on public financing of campaigns, on NAFTA, on telecom immunity for post-Sept. 11 wiretaps, on unconditional talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as he moved to the center for the general election campaign. I misjudged him. He was just getting started.
Like the NYT editorial board, Krauthammer concludes that Obama will
risk nothing for principle, but will abandon all for power. Unlike the
Times, Krauthammer doesn’t find this “perplexing” or caterwaul about it
like a jilted lover, mainly because Krauthammer didn’t buy the act in
the first place. Krauthammer warns about the consequences of electing
a such a man to high office:
Of course, once he gets there he will have to figure out
what he really believes. The conventional liberal/populist stuff he
campaigned on during the primaries? Or the reversals he is so artfully
offering up now?
I have no idea. Do you? Does he?
Meanwhile, the NYT continues to believe:
We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center
for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because
he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the
man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.
There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John
McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme
Court nominations. We don’t want any “redefining” on these big
questions. This country needs change it can believe in.
If it will win Obama the election, we can expect to see “redefining” on all of these issues and more. He already began with Iraq yesterday,
which the editorial board fails to mention in this piece. The last of
Obama’s primary stands will have fallen, and we will be left with a
cipher who will do or say anything to get what he wants.