Cold Blooded Obama
It amazing how much President Obama has been disrespected from all sides of the political spectrum since he took Office. I know many on the right will point to Truthers during the Bush administration – but I don’t remember President Bush or any other President for that matter having to publically prove that he was in fact born in the US and was therefore eligible to be President of the United States.
I know what you are thinking – let it go, that was so last week, this is not a time to politicize this event. This is not a time to politicize this event? Seriously? This is not a time to politicize?
When President Bush ousted the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2003 and declared ‘Mission Accomplished’ – where were the calls to not politicize that event? If Usama Bin Laden died under the watch of a Republican President, do you think we would have got such an understated announcement as the one given by President Obama on Sunday? I can’t remember seeing any banners on Sunday?
None.
I also feel it was extremely shameful from some on the right to downplay President Obama’s role in the operation to kill Usama. It is right that the majority of the credit should go to the now legendary Seal Team 6 that carried out the operation, but people should not underestimate the courage it took for this President to choose the option of a manned raid rather than a drone attack. If things went wrong, the right would not have been blaming the Seal Team which carried out the attack, they would have been blaming Barack Carter. This was an extremely gutsy decision by the American President – a decision right out of 24 – and he should be lauded with praise.
So back to politicizing this debate.
As much as people are now trying to calculate what this event will do for Obama’s re-election chances – I must say that I am firmly in the camp of minimal effects. We are already seeing a bump in his poll numbers, but I suspect that economic matters and gas prices will be the biggest factors to whether he gets elected in 2012.
But, I believe that this event will be the catalyst for the GOP to get serious about finding a candidate to put against Obama. If this past week has taught us anything is that Obama is a formidable politician and leader. It will be extremely foolish for anyone in the Republican Party to underestimate this man any more. No longer can they frame him as weak, a dither or worse, sympathetic to terrorists – the President has proven that he is as cold blooded and ruthless as they come.
The GOP need to start onto a path of growing into a big tent party again – a party that welcomes moderates, not chases them out with pitch-forks. They need to stop looking for the next Reagan and try to find their own Obama – someone that will transform their party and potentially transform America. Someone that will compete with Obama for the youth vote and minority vote. They just need to become serious again. No more Trumps, no more Palins, no more Bachmanns but, dare I say it, more Romneys and Rubios.
If the GOP continue to go down the root of conspiracy theorists (there are those who doubt Usama was killed at all, i’m expecting Trump to emerge as their leader), television presenters/racists and opportunists (yes, I’m looking at you Gingrich) then they have to deal with the real possibility of four more years of President Obama.
22 Responses to “Cold Blooded Obama”
The Memory hole is deep…
Don’t you remember the Arkansas Project, or the Vince Foster Suicide or the Mena Drug Running Operation?
Basically Obambi is being treated by the Right the same way Clinton was…
The Right does not consider any Democratic President to be legitimate, therefor any tactic that can be used to delegitimize them is perfectly fine…
Obama is being treated better than Bush was.
Are you on drugs?
Where were the Mass Media outlets that accused Shrub of being an unelected pResident, that accused him of being a fascist war monger, or a just plain incompetent manager who totally screwed up the Economy?
IOW, where are the Democrats equivalent of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the various right-wing a**hole on Talk Radio?
Sorry EEllis but just NO. Bush after 2005 and prior to 2003 was basically ignored to tolerated by all but the left fringe. This was a style issue in some ways, after 2005 he stopped listening to and in turn sounding like Cheney which I did not know at the time but his entire tone changed to one that no longer openly enrage me but instead one that I sometimes just disagreed with. The 2003-2005 period was one filled with questionable at best decisions and propagandizing and politicizing OVER AND OVER 9/11, “if you are not with us you are with the terrorists.” It was a brand of sore winner that I had not witnessed in politics in my lifetime but I am only in my thirties. I could not for the life of me understand why on earth someone that had a high 80′s to low 90′s approval after 9/11 would decide to paint the opposition as purely in bed with AQ. Meanwhile we have this dude that plugs away and gets the job done and what do we hear???? “He said “I” too much (9 times so you know in a what 1400 word speech) in his speech about Bin Laden’s death.” An action that had it failed they would have said he used “I” to few times. And this is ignoring the constant stream of insults from the left that consider him, for some utterly unknown and reality defying reason, to the right of Bill Clinton. One would think that moderates who constantly whine about how the fringe hates them would see that is something they have in common with their POTUS but that would take admitting that he is a moderate which apparently is a bridge too close to reality to take since that may get him re-elected. Excuse me folks look at the GOP field and look at the state of the nation and his poll numbers even at the worst of times. Now understand that approval doesnt really mean much, what means more is who people trust more the poison they know or the one they dont. This is why it is difficult to unseat a sitting POTUS, and worse yet droves more people like him than approve of everything he does which is the classic beer calculation which does mean a good deal when it comes to voting patterns. They will in essence say “who do I like better” not how bad are things and could the other guy make them better because the other guy is an unknown quantity and to overcome that they need some amazing personality skills, see Bill Clinton against the personality lacking H.W. in the debates. I liked H. W. but Clinton wiped the floor with him as H.W. looked like a clueless doddering fool, which he in no way was but compared to Clintons ability to reach people he may as well have been a stuffy banker. Who in the GOP field even compares to Obama personality wise that is likely to run? Now after that calculation you begin to add up the record and…yea the dude got Bin Laden which will trump anything short of a major military debacle that has yet to happen. This leaves you with domestic issues and again unless the GOP wants to go back to talking like “me to Repub’s” they are in a bad situation. They need a Mr. Charisma but they lack that, for instance Christie just gets near Obama’s brand of charisma and unlike Reagan he is not an old famous movie actor everyone knows for one reason or another. Reagan unlike others trying to unseat a POTUS was a KNOWN quantity. So short of Obama getting a strong lefty third party candidate (which I have yet to see and it would need more than Nader got) and short of a highly charismatic GOP nominee that is a well known quantity I think Obama would need to be caught doing some rather nasty things in a seedy motel room on live stream and even then I wouldnt think the GOP has much chance. Not because he is amazing but because he is a sitting POTUS with a strong record, meaning things continue to improve while also doing good and popular things, Carter and Bush I’s economic numbers were headed down and Obama’s continue to head in the other direction, the only issue is speed…oddly much like the same situation Reagan found himself in when he was re-elected.
One last thing to add to my long tirade. When Bush did things lefties liked they either said so OR they merely ignored it. Obama gets a reaction that I do not even remember with Clinton but I may have a faulty memory. Bad things are accepted with mirth as they tell the world with great joy. All good things, even things that they should be cheering for in the streets compared to how they acted in the Bush years like the BIn Laden thing are treated with either “he said I too much” or utter unvarnished rage at everything else he has or hasnt done. Of course i think this is because they know he is about to be around for 5 or so more years but still it is odd childish and unsettling. I found myself utterly stunned by the amount of people utterly livid that Osama was killed, that his body was dropped at sea, that it wasnt him anyway blah blah blah all said in a near primal scream. It is freakin weird.
Illegal war, bush lied, drunk,coke head, womanizer, dumb, silver spoon, failed at everything, Chimpy McHitler, Stole election, coward,hung in effigy, ect
I can’t even remember all the lies and hateful things said about Bush. Opponants moved into his hometown to protest year round! You may think he deserved every bit of it but it sure did happen.
Well said Dalitso! And DQ! And MSF! I love it when people brush aside the cobwebs and I love it when they debunk phony narratives. Obama isn’t perfect but he’s a solid leader and is in a league well above anyone the GOP has to offer.
And by the way, Bush was indeed criticized and mocked (as well he should have been) but to the extent that matters of degree and proportion count, he might as have been given a pass during most of his reign. That administration didn’t give a fig for ANY of the criticism they received, no matter how well grounded, logical, moral nor timely. As DQ said, “The memory hole is deep…”.
So Bush was mocked but just didn’t let it bother him and he deserved it anyway? So be it but that was not the “poor Obama” putting up with disrespect the like of which has never been seen. It has been seen and worse you just don’t think it is deserved this time. Fair enough, that’s a opinion I’m sure many hold, but the initial claim = FAIL.
EEllis,
The difference between Shrub and Obambi is that Shrub was despised, rightfully so, by a bunch of powerless lefties who did not control the mass media and barely had access to it whereas Obambi has two entire networks (FOX & MSNBC) who do nothing other than beat the shit out of him and generate & fund his opposition (This does not even take into account Talk Radio which is no more than a Right Wing propaganda machine)… If a couple of hundred of Tea-baggers from out of State show up to support any Republican, Fox will make sure that they are prominently on the news, whereas if a 100 Thousands locals show up to protest against any Republican Policy, it wont make the news on any of the networks unless there is a riot and people are hurt…
And none of this takes into account the fact that the Republicans made the filibusterer their default legislative tactic in the Senate with the full support of the mass media, whereas when the Democrats attempted to filibuster a couple of Supreme Court Judges, the mass media and the Republicans started talking Nuclear Option and had plenty of support in the Mass Media…
And BTW where are those WMDs?
It is kind of hard to argue that Bush was treated well from 2003 to 2005 when CBS news and Dan Rather blatantly pushed a forged document to try to undermine Bush’s re-election bid.
Bush gave the Democrats what they wanted in NCLB, bigger entitlement, bigger government, more spending and received zero credit for it.
Bush was never going to be liked by the left but Bush pursued the left so hard that he alienated the right and left office with the respect of no one.
President Obama is still fully supported by the left and had given the right nothing. President Obama has created new entitlements, increased government spending, and paid off all of the core Democratic power blocks.
The idea that the right is harder on Obama comes from the idea that Obama feels zero need to deal with the right and is working very hard to give the left everything that it wants.
SD,
It’s time for you to stop rewriting history and return to your alternate universe, the one in which Shrub pandered to the Left and the one in which Obambi ignores the Right…
The reasons Shrub is hated:
Two lost wars, both based on lies…
One destroyed Land-Mark…
One Sunk City…
One Destroyed economy…
Correction:
Obambi has two entire networks (FOX & CNBC)
All of the propaganda aside, Obama is, at least so far, a much better president than Bush. Bush ran as a moderate in 2000, do something about climate change using the market, put the excess Social Security funds in a lockbox, etc. but turned to the right in office. Obama ran soft left but has steered to the middle in office.
There were excesses criticizing Bush. He was accused of starting an illegal war when in truth he started a legal war by mistake. He was accused of lying on purpose when he actually lied more because of incompetence.
He wasn’t stupid, he and his administration only appeared that way because they fell victim to believing that thirty years of propaganda and random talking points meant only to build a political coalition to lower taxes on the wealthy actually constituted a rational approach to governing.
As moderates we can only condemn Bush, especially for his first term, much less for the second, and applaud Obama and encourage him stay to the center in a second term.
Illegal war-yea and how far did that get the left? He either lied us into war or refused to hear anything that did not turn us in that direction, according to those in the intelligence community, and he STILL won re-election which should tell you something about Obama’s chances as well. Either way that did not start until 2003 and after the 2004 election it was only trumpeted by the left fringe because the rest were to disgusted to think about it anymore no less discuss it. Not a lie but not something that much of the nation seemed to give a flip about either.
Bush lied or willfully ignored all information that did not support his desire to invade Iraq…yea it is one or the other because he was informed that the info he was running on was shaky and the white house(mostly the Cheney wing) decided to go out and attack those messengers.
Drunk other than The National Enquirer that thinks Obama has a gay love child or something this was not a meme on the left. He was a reformed drunk which of course….is what he admitted he was. See you cant use your dark past to prove you have found Jesus and then ignore it otherwise. Not a lie though.
Coke head again see what I said about drunk, also they chased Clinton over pot yet Bush told the press he wouldnt discuss anything about coke and they let it go(again that liberal media that only attacks…liberals for some reason). I know I was utterly stunned since the press is, you know, supposed to investigate and report regardless of a pols desire to discuss something, like they have treated Obama, but apparently being a Bush means not having to answer questions you desire not to have to answer(or maybe in the GOP). Either way not something the left really cared about but hardly a lie.
Womanizer um…wow did you just say that, let me be the first person that says that is a lie and supports you then. This is the first I have heard of such rumors and to be honest it does not ring true to me. Unless you are speaking of his handsy moment with Merkel in Germany in which case that is not womanizing but mildly creepy, of course in a manner in which all men are sooner or later mildly creepy when they think a familiarity exists where it does not. Either way not something to beat the guy up over, more something to laugh at while watching a 30 sec clip once and move on.
Dumb I sort of agree with this one. I think he was more naive and handed over the keys of his presidency to unsavory characters his father had warned him about. He did learn the lesson around 2005 or so but it wasnt due to being dumb. Of course this is a meme that the Bush WH cultivated. Look at Bush speaking publicly prior to the 2000 campaign and you see a stark difference. His slow speech and inability to get it correct at a slow pace was either due to stress on the national stage or, at least in my opinion, a deep desire to look folksy. It succeeded by the way, people wanted to hang out with him and his folksy aww schucks manners which would not have been the case if he would have spoken like he did through most of the 90′s which was more like a well educated frat boy which is odd because that is what he was. I am with you though it is profoundly untrue that he is dumb, if anything he was merely naive but the dumb act is just that, an act.
Silver spoon unless you are re-defining the word “lie” then I am not sure why you put this in here since it is demonstrably true.
Failed at everything do you have examples of his business success to balance his failures? Not a nice way to look at the guy but not a lie either. My honest assessment of Bush II that I formulated around 2004-5 was that he was a man desperately trying to impress his father and failing in every attempt in nearly epic manners to prove himself. For me it is more sad than anything else, I feel incredibly bad for the guy but POTUS is not a position to take to prove yourself. Oddly this is something him and McCain had in common, deep desire to prove something to fathers for some odd reason. Short of his list of successes I really do not think this fits into the lie category but merely unflattering yet true…kinda like saying Obama has no business experience which is also factually true.
Chimpy McHitler which is not one I heard. Look guys with signs at a rally do not make a meme and both sides play the hitler card, for examples see the last two years. Chimp, Chimpy, the Chimperor though I remember and they all pick up little insulting names like “Slick Willy” and “Barry.” Not a way to win over people and have a conversation but at least he wasnt called a muslim cryptomarxist because people at least like monkeys in the US, not so much commies and muslims…they scare us to much.
Stole election hmm this is all in how you view it but I do not remember the left saying Bush orchestrated that but instead that the SC voted along party lines and handed it to them due to partisan preference. So the SC stole the election not Bush. BTW with the constant amount of rage on the right since Obama got in office with 53% of the vote can you imagine what would have happened if 2008 was a repeat of 2000 but gave it to Obama with a left leaning court? My guess is that we would be dealing with a much larger amount of violence and even though he won 53% he is constantly charged with stealing the 2008 election.
Coward hmm I have to assume you are talking about him being a fortunate son that didnt have to go to Vietnam which is again true. He was a chicken hawk as many in his Admin were that got constant deferments to avoid serving. Now sure maybe all of the deferments of all involved were all on the up and up, something that I think is nearly statistically impossible, but I still do not respect someone that dodged service telling me and mine to march into hell on their whim and I felt the same about CLinton though he did a lot less requests for service. Note though that Obama was to young for the draft so he didnt dodge service he merely didnt join, this should make a lot of the chicken hawk attacks go away for both sides…as long as we dont bring the draft back at some point.
Hung in effigy pretty sure this was done to Clinton and it has been done to Obama many times, welcome to being a POTUS. Our politics are rather ugly here and have been right back to Jefferson and Adams and the fringe always takes it to the most vile of extremes if given any reason at all. LBJ, Nixon were also hung in effigy though I am unsure on the rest.
“I can’t even remember all the lies and hateful things said about Bush. Opponents moved into his hometown to protest year round!” Cindy Sheehan is on the fringe and is in no way shape or form a fan of Obama either and regularly releases statements of how utterly evil he is.
“You may think he deserved every bit of it but it sure did happen.” Yet you fail to separate lies from truth mixing them altogether and then being sad about it. You also fail to note that a good portion of it is from and remained on the fringe, as I had noted. Look if you want to excuse the way you or others talk about the current POTUS or judge him because the left hurt your feelings in the Bush years that is fine but your hunger for vengeance will merely fuel anothers hunger for vengeance against the next GOP POTUS. The right HUNTED Clinton from the day he took office until around 98 or so, then in revenge the left hunted Bush, hunting Obama will not complete the circle but merely continue the pattern. Basically everything you gave as an excuse could be explained away by “but look how they treated Clinton” which means that those joining in on the games now are the mirror image of those they hated in the Bush years and in no way better(in fact with every POTUS we seem to get worse if you start grading in the Clinton years).
I do not think Bush deserved a good deal of what he got but I will say he did until he changed his habits. The period 2003-2005 is the one I am speaking of with Iraq and those lovely stop loss programs and much much more. Once he broke from Cheney and moderated I had no issue with him and actually spent much of the time feeling bad for the guy but we sow what we reap and the shoe thing for example was a direct result of invading that guys country. Those that start such things get the lions share of the hate. For example LBJ got chants about him killing babies to haunt him to his death bed and Nixon didnt, sure Nixon had other problems but the point is solid. You seem to think that Nixon should have gotten the same treatment that the guy that got us there in the first place did which would result in Obama getting the Bush treatment but Iraq is winding down not up and Libya is being treated like Kosovo which lacked the boots on the ground that tend to make voters uncomfortable.
SD-Between 2003-2005 he WAS treated rather well by the media but that was because they were attacked for questioning him after 9/11 and they abdicated their duty, during the election we had around 6 months of actual coverage. The Rather thing is easily balanced by noting that the NYT’s did not publish the story about wiretapping until AFTER the 2004 election even though it was completed beforehand(which likely would have tipped the election, nice job “liberal media” lol). The really funny thing about the Rather affair is that no one questions that the story against Bush is largely true, merely that the document used to “prove” it was false and not properly vetted prior to release by Rather. If I were a campaign manager I cant think of a better way to make the story go away if it makes my candidate look bad. He was a fortunate son, and everyone knows it. What we lack is physical documentation noting that was the case, or oddly much paperwork at all for the military which is rather odd, a reporter running with something that they think proves what is rather common knowledge in the public is a natural reaction. I personally still think Rather was setup in vengeance for his actions in the 70′s and 80′s when he asked some rather uncomfortable questions in a rather combative manner. Rather took the bait and ran with it for which he has been punished and was punished rather swiftly. Either way he was fired for what on Fox News would get him a raise.
I agree with the second half of Dalitso’s essay – that the GOP is harmed by the focus on silly things like the birth certificate issue and the GOP’s lack of serious candidates at this point. Having Palin, Bachmann and Trump as the faces of the party doesn’t bode well for the future, although I believe eventually a serious non-loony candidate will emerge. It’s still awfully early.
I take issue with the first part of the essay, though. There is nothing unique about the attacks on Obama. The specifics are different of course, but there is no difference in viciousness or pettiness between the attacks on Clinton, GWB and Obama. With all 3 there were/are a certain number of people that will knee-jerk criticize purely out of partisanship. Of course there were/are people that will defend the president purely out of partisanship as well, and that group tends to portray all criticism of “their” president as biased.
MSF you want to distinguish by what you believe is earned and unearned criticism. It just doesn’t work like that. Everyone who criticizes believes what they say and no one believes their “Guy” deserves all criticism they get. Human nature. Factually speaking Bush received more and harsher criticism, but you feel it is justified, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen just that you are OK with that but not with Obama being criticized. That birther stuff is pretty annoying and incorrect but I never noticed you ever correcting any of the false claims made about Bush. So it’s not about honesty it’s that Obama is your “Guy”.
EEllis-Well maybe that is because I didnt start posting on TMV until after Bush was out of office, or at least out enough that he was rather ignorable. Instead of me just talking out both sides of my mouth maybe I was doing those defenses elsewhere, like Reddit. I do distinguish between earned and unearned criticism since going after Obama about health care or a myriad of reforms he was involved in makes sense but going after him for say his college transcripts does not. Going after Bush because of Iraq was correct, since it is rather obvious to much of the nation mistakes were made, but going after him for being dumb is rather stupid.
Many of the “false claims” that you noted were actually true like the silver spoon. Why would I waste my time debating things that are true? For instance one of the major Bush jabs was the war criminal one. The right loves to laugh at that but the problem is if he knowingly lied about Iraq or massaged or requested that the intelligence be massaged to create the possibility to invade that is technically an international war crime.
You seem to see Bush as the most wrongfully maligned POTUS in recent memory and what is sad is that in some ways I agree with you but you lose me by ignoring what I think is rather obvious. Since the hunting of Clinton the nastiness and hate has been increasing with every POTUS which means that Obama is now catching heat and insults at a higher clip by a larger group than Bush was much as Bush caught more than Clinton. This is a nice way of saying that the fringe of both parties is growing and I do not think that is really the case but instead that those that seek vengeance for their hurt feelings about their guy and what was done to him continues to fuel more vengeance. I got angry with Bush over Iraq but not Afgh for instance yet I have seen more Obamas rage since the killing of Bin Laden than I have even seen during his reform push which makes little sense to me.
Bush is wrongly maligned in my view much like LBJ and Hoover were, Carter also fit in this list. They were POTUS’s that ended their parties 40 year cycles, or came after they had waned like Carter, and were therefore out of step with the direction the nation was about to head and they therefore get unfairly hated while those that followed got undue credit if for no other reason than pure optics.
Obama may be my guy EEllis but it seems Bush was yours and you will never ever forgive nor forget what was done to him by those evil lefties and therefore prefer to become just like those you hated in the Bush years. Have fun with that but I would prefer to keep pointing out that this disease has to die at some point and tracking the history of it, which I did on many sites throughout the Bush years comparing how the fringe was hunting him to how the right hunted Clinton which was looked on just as dimly as you look on my comments now.
@MSF
I do distinguish between earned and unearned criticism since going after Obama about health care or a myriad of reforms he was involved in makes sense but going after him for say his college transcripts does not.
The college grades of GWB, Gore and Kerry were all discussed by both the right and left. In fact there was that fake report on presidential IQs that was floating around about Bush, too. I agree it’s kind of silly to argue about college grades when all of them have a track record after that, but what you can’t say is that Obama was singled out.
DaGoat-yea the birther thing was a much better example that has recently been takin away from me. I personally remember thinking how stupid the Bush college years discussions were since most people that make it to that level of power come from powerful families and good and bad grades prove nor disprove anything.
Huh? I really wish people would read what I write and not attribute all the crap in there heads to me. Look I was just commenting on volume of dissent.Period. I think trying to decide the “quality” is a losing game and just by volume Bush had it worse. Plenty of reason for it, and it didn’t start at first, but then Bush really didn’t embark on anything too controversial right off the bat and Obama did with health care. In fact when you consider things Obama may have gotten of lighter than we might have thought.