There is a flipside to ODS. All too often Republicans have indulged in the fantasy that Obama will be constrained by popular opinion, the constitution, traditions and the media, etc. Many republicans want to believe he means well, is really a nice guy and is working for the Country’s interest.
i completely agree with Wretchard that criticism of Obama needs to be founded in reality. On Obama’s actions. The problem is it is very hard to tell where the reality ends and the fantasy begins.
The problem with Obama is that he regularly head fakes, and feints constitutionally appropriate and reasonable action, when in the end he does something truly radical and dangerous. Like the news conference on GM, the way I heard it, he went out of his way to say his intention was not to run or manage GM, but then he fires the CEO, is getting involved the terms of GM’s warranties and wants to determine GM’s product line mix.
For example, today Hugh Hewitt wanted to douse any discussion of dictatorship and wanted to call Obama a “managed capitalist”. Excuse me, I think that is a bit of goody too shoes fantasy. Europe’s version of managed Capitalism could only exist because it was protected by the US, and could hook its caboose to America’s dynamic capitalist system and export many of its goods to the US. From what we’ve seen so far, it appears Obama is on a path to constrict truly free enterprise and restrict free thought, ( the key to free enterprise) to a small set of officially approved ideas that could lead to an imploding economy and society.
In the meantime, grasping where the long list of Obama’s monkeywrenching interventions into the economy and foriegn policy will lead us will make your head explode. The permutations and combinations are just too much. But the bad part of Obama’s poliicies is that on many of his ideas like denying health care to Vets, or to the elderly via a cost benefit ratio, or to submitting to a international currency standard,or to seizing any business for who knows what, to kowtowing to the Russian and Iranian nuclear threat, there is a cruel, nasty Anti-American streak and edge that is bone chilling and frightening.
