At the American Thinker today, C. Edmund Wright looks at the “Obama of Roanoke,” the location of his now legendary Kinsley-esque gaffe and replies, “We Saw You Coming:”
Obama of Roanoke, understand, is not merely a specific person named Barack Hussein Obama. He is Van Jones. He is Elizabeth Warren. He is Valerie Jarrett. He is Steven Chu and Cass Sunstein. He is Jeremiah Wright and Frank Marshall Davis and Karl Marx and many others. Obama of Roanoke is not some benign elegant speaker. Obama of Roanoke is a malignant mindset. His fingerprints are all over the biggest disasters in world history. For this reason, he was and is utterly predictable long before Friday last.
And many utterly predicted him, though for some reason they are not among the elite pundit wizards of smart or among elected Republicans for the most part.
All through the campaign of 2008 Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity and Joe the Plumber saw him coming. Why do you think Rush said “I hope he fails.” The millions who flocked to see “Atlas Shrugged” also saw him. And here, in early 2009, I outlined why we were systematically dismembering my business of 20 years — that I actually did build by the way — and why I knew instinctively that millions of others would do some iteration of the same thing we were doing.
Why did we do this and how did we know it was the thing to do? Obama of Roanoke, that’s why. It mattered not at all that he waited until July of 2012 to give the Roanoke speech. Obama of Roanoke is exactly who he has always been and he has done exactly as many of us expected him to do. The Roanoke speech was not a contextual problem nor was it an aberration or a teleprompter misprint.
Back in September of 2009, when Van Jones went under the wheels of the Obama bus, I linked to a story by pundit Dan Calabrese, who explained “Why Van Jones Had to Go” — he exposed “the Left’s Family Secrets.” Referencing a line from one of Mr. Obama’s favorite movies/how-to guides, I had titled my post, “Santino, Never Tell Anyone Outside The Family What You’re Thinking.” By breaking the code of omertà himself, the would-be Godfather himself did just that in his Roanoke speech.
Related: Charles Murray adds, “That’s the thing about Obama. Time and again, he does things and says things that are un-American. Not evil. Not anti-American. Just un-American.” Read the whole thing.
More: “If not un-American, the ideas that propel Obama’s re-election campaign are certainly unprecedented,” David Harsanyi writes at Reason.
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