Barack Obama is a liar and a hypocrite who is fundamentally not to be trusted. And I can prove that charge with his very own words.
From March 3 via UPI:
Obama outlined his proposal that included several Republican-generated ideas and called on Congress to pass healthcare reform within the next several weeks. By calling for an up-or-down vote, Obama noted that several major bills passed by a simple majority — otherwise known as reconciliation, a parliamentary procedure — during several previous administrations, including that of George W. Bush.
Do you want to know how extreme reconciliation is? Just ask Barry Hussein:
Obama’s Discarded Wisdom
Breitbart.tv has a terrific two-minute video featuring clips of Barack Obama commenting on the need to build consensus before attempting to enact major social legislation. (If the above link doesn’t work, try this one.) As a public service, we’ve transcribed the Obama comments:• “My understanding of the Senate is, is that you need 60 votes to get something significant to happen, which means that Democrats and Republicans have to ask the question: Do we have the will to move an American agenda forward, not a Democratic or Republican agenda forward?“–CBS-TV election night interview, Nov. 2, 2004
• “The bottom line is that our health-care plans are similar. The question, once again, is: Who can get it done? Who can build a movement for change? This is an area where we’re going to have to have a 60% majority in the Senate and the House in order to actually get a bill to my desk. We’re going to have to have a majority, to get the bill to my desk, that is not just a 50-plus-1 majority.”–Change to Win convention, Sept. 25, 2007
• “You’ve got to break out of what I call the sort of 50-plus-1 pattern of presidential politics. Maybe you eke out a victory of 50 plus 1, but you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One–I mean, there are a lot of nice perks, but you can’t deliver on health care. We’re not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-1 strategy.”–interview with the Concord (N.H.) Monitor, Oct. 9, 2007
• “You know, one of the arguments that sometimes I get with my fellow progressives–and some of these have flashed up in the blog communities on occasion–is this notion that we should function sort of like Karl Rove, where we identify our core base, we throw them red meat, we get a 50-plus-1 victory. But see, Karl Rove doesn’t need a broad consensus, because he doesn’t believe in government. If we want to transform the country, though, that requires a sizable majority.”–Center for American Progress, July 12, 2006
Although the site that originated the video seems to be anti-Obama in orientation (it’s called Naked Emperor News, presumably meant to compare the president to the character in the fable), we must say that most of what Obama said back then is eminently sensible. He explained almost as well as we can why what he is doing now–pushing Congress to “transform the country” precisely via a “50-plus-1” strategy, is so foolish and dangerous.
Observers will disagree over what combination of ideological radicalism, egomania and sheer cynicism is motivating him, but what is clear is that President Obama is quite different from what Candidate Obama advertised.
Which is a polite way of saying he’s a galling hypocrite who deceitfully said one thing, and then actually did the very opposite thing.
Is Obama worse than Karl Rove, on his very own criterion??? If so, than Democrats should despise him more than they do Karl Rove, unless they too are the same sort of hypocrites. Further, can we now take this to mean that Barack Obama does not believe in government in the same way he demonized Rove???
Is Obama now proving that he is a “government atheist”?
Barack Obama deserves to be reviled based on his very own standard of judgment.
This is a more substantial citation of one of the Obama quotes above:
You’ve got to break out of what I call the sort of 50 plus one pattern of presidential politics which is you have nasty primaries where everybody’s disheartened and beaten up. Then you divide the country 45 percent on one side, and 45 percent on the other, and 10 percent in the middle and (unintelligible) and Florida behind. And battle it out and then maybe you eke out a victory of 50 plus one. Then you can’t govern. You know, you get Air Force One, I mean there are a lot of nice perks for being president. But you can’t, you can’t deliver on healthcare. We are not going to pass universal healthcare with a 50 plus one strategy. We’re not going to have a serious, bold energy policy of the sort I proposed yesterday unless you build a working majority.
Obama specifically said he would disavow the very strategy that he is now embracing.
Barack Obama is at the very top of a list of vehemently reconciliation-damning quotes from Democrats compiled by Human Events:
Barack Obama 4/25/05: “The President hasn’t gotten his way. And that is now prompting a change in the Senate rules that really I think would change the character of the Senate forever…what I worry about would be that you essentially still have two chambers the House and the Senate but you have simply majoritarian absolute power on either side, and that’s just not what the founders intended.”
Would you like to know why Obama said the founding fathers never intended the thing that he is despicably now trying to do? Here’s how the founding fathers described the US Senate:
Writing to Thomas Jefferson, who had been out of the country during the Constitutional Convention, James Madison explained that the Constitution’s framers considered the Senate to be the great “anchor” of the government. To the framers themselves, Madison explained that the Senate would be a “necessary fence” against the “fickleness and passion” that tended to influence the attitudes of the general public and members of the House of Representatives. George Washington is said to have told Jefferson that the framers had created the Senate to “cool” House legislation just as a saucer was used to cool hot tea.
Obama is now calling for that which he has already publicly recognized as being something that would “change the character of the Senate forever” in a way he acknowledged was “not what the founders intended.”
Can we all just agree that Obama is unAmerican now???
The Republicans were different back in 2005 from the Democrats today when this argument last took place. And as usual, they were better. They didn’t follow through using a procedure that was designed to pass a budget (which is what reconciliation was intended to resolve) for a frankly unconstitutional use. They certainly didn’t use it to place nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy under the thrall of their party, as Democrats are trying to do now.
Have the Republicans ever been hypocrites on the issue of reconciliation? I’m sure they have. But that’s besides the point in the sense that the Democrats – if they use the procedure now – stand utterly condemned as liars and hypocrites by their very own words:
Hillary Clinton 5/23/2005: “So this president has come to the majority here in the Senate and basically said ‘change the rules.’ ‘Do it the way I want it done.’ And I guess there just weren’t very many voices on the other side of the isle that acted the way previous generations of senators have acted and said ‘Mr. President we are with you, we support you, but that’s a bridge too far we can’t go there.’ You have to restrain yourself Mr. President.
Charles Schumer 5/18/2005: “We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis. The checks and balances which have been at the core of this Republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote you don’t get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing it’s almost a temper tantrum.
Harry Reid 5/18/2005: “Mr. President the right to extended debate is never more important than the one party who controls congress and the white house. In these cases the filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves our limited government.”
Dianne Feinstein 5/18/2005: The nuclear option if successful will turn the Senate into a body that could have its rules broken at any time by a majority of senators unhappy with any position taken by the minority. It begins with judicial nominations. Next will be executive appointments and then legislation.
Joe Biden 5/23/2005: This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power. It is a fundamental power grab.
Harry Reid 5/18/2005: “But no we are not going to follow the Senate rules. No, because of the arrogance of power of this Republican administration.”
Chris Dodd 5/18/2005: “I’ve never passed a single bill worth talking about that didn’t have a lead co sponsor that was a Republican. And I don’t know of a single piece of legislation that’s ever been adopted here that didn’t have a Republican and Democrat in the lead. That’s because we need to sit down and work with each other. The rules of this institution have required that. That’s why we exist. Why have a bicameral legislative body? Why have two chambers? What were the framers thinking about 218 years ago? They understood Mr. President that there is a tyranny of the majority.
Dianne Feinstein 5/18/2005: “If the Republican leadership insists on forcing the nuclear option the senate becomes ipso facto the House of Representatives where the majority rules supreme and the party of power can dominate and control the agenda with absolute power.”
Hillary Clinton 5/23/2005: “You’ve got majority rule and then you have the senate over here where people can slow things down where they can debate where they have something called the filibuster. You know it seems like it’s a little less than efficient — well that’s right it is. And deliberately designed to be so.”
Joe Biden 5/23/05: “I say to my friends on the Republican side you may own the field right now buy you won’t own it forever I pray God when the Democrats take back control we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.”
Charles Schumer 5/23/2005: “They want their way every single time. And they will change the rules, break the rules, and misread the constitution so that they will get their way.”
Hillary Clinton 5/23/2005: “The Senate is being asked to turn itself inside out, to ignore the precedent to ignore the way our system has work, the delicate balance that we have obtain that has kept this constitution system going, for immediate gratification of the present President.”
Max Baucus 5/19/2005: “This is the way Democracy ends. Not with a bomb but with a gavel.”
This is a procedure that should simply not be used to pass major legislation which essentially transform nearly a fifth of the economy, and which literally puts our lives and our freedoms on the line.
Major polls such as Rasmussen (44% favoring versus 52% oppose) and Gallup (42% favoring versus 49% opposed) across the board demonstrate that the American people do not want this 2,700 page monstrosity. The American people not only oppose ObamaCare, but they oppose it by greater margins than that which propelled Obama into the White House.
Just how is it, given that the people clearly do not want this, that the Democrats have any right whatsoever to use a procedure which they themselves demonized to ram it through.
Start Thinking Right 