I was at the Restoring Honor rally this past weekend. Since then, I have been following the comments and interviews in the media about the event and it got me thinking. So I decided to scribbled down some of my thoughts as my wife and I make the long drive back from Washington D.C.
A man can only be called racist so many times before it stops meaning anything. All the commentators online, in print, and on TV have used this charge to the point it means nothing anymore. They wore it out because, rather than using it against real racism, they use it as a political football to silence their opponents. Nobody likes to be called racist. And initially it keeps people from speaking their opinions. It keeps people from having honest debate. This is nothing new to the Left with their speech codes on college campuses, but it has been so widely deployed in defense of Obama it has reached a new level.
So, to address the silly notion that growing distrust and falling support for Obama is simply “racism”, here are some thoughts swirling in my mind:
• Is the recent Pew poll on Obama’s religious views really all that shocking? He sat in the pews of Jeremiah Wright for 20 years and plays golf on Sunday rather than going to church. His political life is filled with vagueness, allowing people to project themselves onto him (he’s even said this himself). People tire of this – they want clarity and truth. As a result, people don’t trust him when he just says something. And they don’t see anything he does that is religious. I don’t think he is Muslim, but I also don’t think he is Christian. Sure he says he is Christian, but I don’t believe him. I am clearly not alone.
• It is nice to see that Nobel Prize winning Paul Krugman is starting to realize the economy has stalled. I said this would happen on my blog last November. Of course Paul and I don’t agree on the solution, but maybe in another year he’ll finally come around on that too. I might be dreaming.
• One more thing about point #1: if Rush Limbaugh is to blame due to his recent calling the President “Imam Obama”, then he must have a time machine because the Pew poll was taken before his coining the phrase. It was also taken before Obama’s comments on the Ground Zero Mosque/Muslim Community Center. Why again is it not Obama’s fault that something supposedly so core to him is a mystery to Americans? Then again, this assumes it actually is core to him.
• I attended the Restoring Honor rally. One thing was very clear from the start - the message was overwhelmingly religious, not political. I listen to Glenn Beck fairly often and I was surprised how non-political the event was (unless you consider faith, honor, and charity to be political issues). I am still trying to reconcile the commentary in the media with what I saw. I’d love to ask the “tolerant” Left what message at the event was anti-black? And if the group was “predominantly white”’ what was Sharpton’s rally? Ironically for Liberals, the Restoring Honor rally was more diverse (by the bigoted standards of skin color that the Left uses) than Sharpton’s rally. Go figure… Oh, and it was about 100 times the size.
• Remember that oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico? Yeah, I know, it was a couple months ago. Now most news coming out of that region is that the oil has mostly dispersed. So the enviro-crowd, not wanting to look foolish, is now worried about dispersants. That will go nowhere also (well, we might have more red tape, but nothing will ever be found to have been seriously hurt by dispersants - even the EPA has reported back to Obama that their use was not seriously beyond current regs). But let’s not forget, the Obama administration called this the “worst spill in American history”, it would really suck if he was completely wrong yet again. But he did take the opportunity to institute a drilling moratorium which is killing the Gulf oil business. Mission accomplished.
• I get a kick out of commentators who talk about Republican obstruction. For all of 2009, the Republicans did not have the votes to stop anything. All obstruction was disagreement amongst Democrats. But it is always better to scape goat the other party.
• I think raising taxes right now is about the most foolish thing to do, but I don’t think the Dems can extend the Bush tax cuts. Lord knows that I want them to, but they have built so much around the “the tax cuts didn’t help and only went to the rich” message that an extension would be effectively an admission that they DID (and DO) work. The Catch-22 of all this is that when they expire, the added tax burden across all income brackets will K.O. the already anemic economy. So they can either do the right thing for Americans or they can try to figure out how to spin the misery to seem like it isn’t their fault. I know what I am betting they try to do.
• I am seriously pissed that Bush instituted TARP. Conservatives everywhere were pretty disappointed in Bush for his rampant spending. Obama supported and voted for TARP. He was a Senator at the time. It has become a giant slush fund to be spent as the Treasury Secretary sees fit. Those on the Left wanting to understand the Tea Party, however, are advised to not forget the equally huge Stimulus bill, the recent federal aid bill to the states, ObamaCare, and the financial reform bill. The first two are straightforward deficit spending beyond anything the US has ever seen. ObamaCare is unpopular and support for repeal continues to grow in polls. It hasn’t and will continue to fail in the mission of bringing down healthcare costs. And it includes an individual mandate (a tax) to buy heath insurance. Financial reform, like HCR, was yet another bill with over a thousand pages that passed before very much debate and before anyone could realistically read and comprehend it all. We are still finding new clauses in the HCR and Financial bills. The American people are not morons. They realize that the only outcome of a bill so unwieldy is to practically vest unlimited power in the Federal government. This out of control growth in government and the lack of accountability is scaring a lot of people - and it should.
Trying to defend a record like this, I can almost understand the Left and the media having to resort to blaming Americans for their “inherent racism” toward our first black President. The alternative - that Obama is an inept hack job without leadership experience or skills who is spending the country into bankruptcy out of some affinity for Liberation Theology - just doesn’t sell all that well.
