Truth and consequences
I don’t read Obama’s mind (more’s the pity; what a scoop I’d get if I did!). But it strikes me that this just may be the first time in his life he’s ever been in such difficulty, the first time his glib obfuscations aren’t working all that well for him. And he may be shocked, although as a narcissist he may continue to think he’ll skate by.
And if so, perhaps he’s right. We need to remember that.
However, there’s been a slow acceleration of events and disclosures that look very bad for him, and some of his most stalwart supporters are starting to turn. It must be disconcerting. Maybe it’s even frightening. He’s a very very proud man.
And how ironic that it comes just a few months after what might have been his greatest triumph, winning a second term despite an abysmal record of accomplishment and predictions that he would lose. He probably thought that now he was home free to enact whatever agenda he wanted to—although one pesky little problem remained: the House was still in Republican hands, although less strongly than before.
But that would be remedied in 2014, perhaps, when the goal was to win back the House for the Democrats. To that end, the ever-political, ever-campaigning Obama was already directing energy.
Now this.
Well, we’ll see. Never underestimate the loyalty of whores and morons.
Delaying the scandals actually backfired. They were so worried about 2012, and I suppose rightly so. But if these had trickled out over time, I don’t think they would have hit with the same force. Right now everyone seems to be reeling from these events and not sure what to make of them. It will sink in and then he’s sunk. He won’t be ousted of course. But his dream of winning back the Congress is over. He’ll be content to gallivant around the world on taxpayer money, waiting for the days that he gets paid millions of dollars per year to talk about those heady early days of hope and change and how awful America was to turn on him so.
“But his dream of winning back the Congress is over.”
Maybe. The Democrats have a strong ground game where they promise stuff and also convince people that Republicans are against them and want to keep away or take away their stuff. That may compensate.
Others have pointed out the parallels between now and Nixon’s Watergate, primarily that Nixon won in a landslide and appeared to have the wind at his back and clear sailing ahead, then Watergate arose.
The difference of course is the biased MSM but the Obama administration scandals are much more serious than Watergate was, everything depends upon continued whistle-blower testimony and the persistence of Republican actions in forcing independent investigations.
He’s been a lying thug from the get-go.
“But he looks so grand and speaks so well….”
Morever, “These things he’s supposed to have done. They’re they’re just, so, so unbelieveable!….
And so, most of his supporters just won’t believe it.
End of tale.
File under: Victory goes to the audacious (though it helps in some cases to be a charismatic psychopath)
The media has been shilling for Obama the past 4 years and they aren’t about to quit now. The media will protect him like the praetorian guard.
Jim Geraghty at NRO quoted this regarding recent polling news yesterday:
“Majorities of Americans believe that the Internal Revenue Service deliberately harassed conservative groups by targeting them for special scrutiny and say that the Obama administration is trying to cover up important details about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans last year.
But a new Washington Post-ABC News poll also finds that allegations of impropriety related to the controversies have yet to affect President Obama’s political standing….”
http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/348908/61-say-sequester-has-no-impact-them-so-far-jim-geraghty
I have heard other reports that Obama’s job approval rating remains high (over 50 percent) unless that has changed very recently. It’s always been inexplicable to me that his approval rating stays relatively high in spite of EVERYTHING (and of course lately it’s been a deluge). After the reelection nothing surprises me anymore.
So I remain pessimistic that he will suffer any real consequences, even with some of the press seemingly waking up from their longterm stupor.
Barack’s possible befuddlement .. reminds of a Carol Platt Liebau observation, during the early months of 2009:
Barack, inside a Harvard atmosphere which had been openly hostile to conservatives, was polite to conservatives. This politeness was rare.
Liebau speculated that 2009 POTUS Barack still believed that being polite to conservatives ought to be enough; ought to win him points. In other words, Liebau speculated, POTUS Barack did not appear to comprehend that he would need to work with conservatives; compromise. Rather, Liebau speculated, POTUS Barack believed he ought be able to be be polite .. and then go on to do exactly anything he wanted .. and he ought then be beloved, by conservatives and moderates, for the wonderful way in which he was reaching out. Liebau wondered if 2009 Barack were befuddled at the hostility which was being directed at him.
CV: “It’s always been inexplicable to me that his approval rating stays relatively high in spite of EVERYTHING (and of course lately it’s been a deluge).”
It’s not inexplicable. The value and significance of the scandals are self-evident to you. Not so to others who are not like-minded.
Most people need a contextual frame and narrative to organize controversies so people know up front ‘What difference does this make’ and ‘Why does this matter (to me)’.
Think of an opening argument in a trial or the picture on a puzzle box. Without them, neither the evidence nor puzzle pieces make sense. Each piece might or might not have some intrinsic meaning, but lacking a guide, they won’t form the proper picture.
If the GOP continues to fail to offer a sufficient frame and narrative, none of this will make a difference in the long-run in the Dems v GOP political contest. It’ll blow over and the Dems will retain their frame.
The Democrats demonstrated how to create and utilize scandals for lasting political gains with their attacks on Bush. The GOP has enough to work with here, but they aren’t doing it right.
This (these) guy(s) has been bluffing from day one. Every time one of his ploys seemed to have resistance forming to it, he would fold and try a different way. Just like the sequester say no, no, no, and keep investigating, keep hauling these people up before committees and keep issuing subpenas !
And to add: nothing comes out of the House until all these scandals are resolved “nothing”.
Meh. This is the first time he hasn’t been able to escape his scandals because he won higher office. This is the first time he has had to clean up his own mess……
This, friends, is the mindset we’re up against:
http://tinyurl.com/q6vwupa
Full Thug Mode.
I was at a meeting recently where I heard two republican governors lecturing the conservative attendees about supporting “purist” candidates, and how destructive that is for the Party. How everything Reagan got through Congress was the result of a “compromise.”
Of course, that was on the RIGHTward end of the football field — now we’re pinned against the Left’s goal line. Compromise in this position is insanity.
Kind of like “compromising” with the beheading moslems in London yesterday (nota bene: the cops with guns didn’t arrive for 20 full minutes, during which time the murderers/terrorists waltzed around the corpse, telling people to take pictures of the poor man they’d shot and hacked to death, and No One took them down.)
“Put not your trust in princes. . . .”
One last thing: nothing’s going to happen to Barry-O, and he knows it. He’s just feeling a bit irky that his Wonderfulness is actually being criticized, even obliquely. But the toadies and lickspittles will continue to worship at his altar, never fear. His minions aren’t worried either: at worst, they retire early with bonuses, emoluments, full pensions, entree to all the Best Parties, etc., etc., and a lifetime lavish pension at the expense of us poor schmuck citizens.
Man, if you can romance the canine Repeatedly like that creature Gorelick and not only not get fired, but be promoted higher and higher, you gotta realize we’re on an entirely different planet.
On Fox, Oreilly has pointed out that we have *paid* Lerner
$750.000.000 over the past 3 yrs !
Ditto for that Shulman & Miller , i m sure. &
*they know NOTHING !!!!*
The high cost of incompetence these days !
Beverly,
The GOP needs to change the frame, narrative, and the political climate. The problem is either they’ve accepted or agree with the Dems frame or believe they’re powerless to change it.
It’s an golden opportunity for the Tea Party to mount a high profile, high volume populist movement to change the frame, narrative, and national discourse, but the Tea Party has made the mistake of defanging itself by working ‘quietly’ through the GOP to elect candidates. It can do both, but the priority should be the populist movement. I don’t know that the right has adequate activists to compete with the left on the ground, though.
Eric-
In case you hadn’t noticed, the “Tea Party” is a movement, not a “Party”. Some hundreds of local Tea Party organizations were the objects of IRS persecution for seeking individual tax-exempt status. The “Tea Party” as such does not exist as a coherent entity so your charge that “it” made a mistake is mistaken. The Tea Party Patriots and the Tea Party Express are two entities that are competing to achieve national party status, principally through fund-raising. That will take time; thereafter we shall see. But the GOP in DC has been no friend to this movement. Too entrenched.
The establishment GOPers are the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Leftoid Apparat.
(No offense meant to my fellow females; I think you know what I mean.)
One of those Republican (former) governors, currently a senator, actually came right out and said he wasn’t aiming for any tax CUTS — that’s unrealistic! — he’s touting a “slower increase.”
Wanna suffocate fast or slow?
Don Carlos,
I know what the Tea Party is. I case you hadn’t noticed, A “movement” is what the Tea Party claims to be and what America needs it to be, but it is not.
The Tea Party also has local problems – our Republican legislature and R Governor just passed and signed into law the Common Core Curriculum. Parents in the Tea Party are truly freaked and are concentrating on local School board elections.
I have advocated that our local Tea Party should take the position that the mounting scandals in all areas just make self-evident the Tea Party position on small government. Forget Barack Obama – his incompetence is only a small part of the overall failure of centralized government to even perform its constitutional duties, much less the extensions being pushed by Progressives.
We had two small demos last Tuesday – at the IRS office in Miami and at Marco Rubio’s office there – with demonstrators dressed in black protesting the Amnesty bill that the Senate is engaged in passing while we are all distracted here.
Beverly, evil becomes self sustaining when people go on vacation when they should have been killing evil.
Well, only in so far as evil has something to suck energy out of, like a parasite, but they’ll keep humans as stock animals around long enough for that at least.
“The GOP needs to change the frame, narrative, and the political climate.”
Most of the time the GOP does what the Left tells them, either due to bribery, blackmail, or fear.
If TOTUS doesn’t show it, he can’t say it.
The Tea Party needs to find its inner Marx and turn up its activism. Despite the excuses, they have everything they need right now to compete. In fact, the perceived weaknesses can be utilized. Keep in mind, the structure will clarify during the course of competition.
The Communist Manifesto was the result of Marx settling on workers as his universal class while seeking a real-world, flesh-and-blood application of his general philosophy.
However, Marx’s general philosophy isn’t limited to workers. It can be applied by activists across the political spectrum. Any group can adopt the mantle of the universal class. Indeed, Islamic radicals are a Marxist application and consider themselves to be the universal class. Which is why the Left and Islamic radicals oddly seem to conflict ideologically yet share fundamental common ground. Ideologically, they clash, but in their Marxist base and their common enemy, they are kin.
The modern political environment is Marxist. The game is the game. Again, Communism is just a particular application of Marxism. It behooves the Tea Party to learn and use the structures and methods of Marxism. Easy enough – they can learn them from activists on the Left.
It can be done. The Tea Party just needs to drop the ego and get serious about reprogramming America – educating the educators – with a real, prosletyzing populist movement. America needs the Tea Party to compete in earnest on the ground. If they do not outright win the game, then we need them to at least change the political environment.
So let’s see a show of hands, all who have voiced Tea Party opinions: Have you participated in your local Tea Party? I have. Have you?