Published: May 03, 2008 08:28 pm            

FLASHPOINT: Obama has revealed his own hypocrisy, arrogance

As a conservative I relish the delicious spectacle unfolding before me as Democrats engage in internecine warfare at a time when they should be coming together. As the Clinton/Obama soap opera escalates so do their negative poll numbers. Speaking of Hillary, whither her feminist support? Perhaps feminists’ zeal to elect a “black preppie from paradise” trumps their allegiance to the sisterhood.

Yes, Hillary got caught telling a whopper by insisting that she had once landed under sniper fire. As one wag quipped, if she really wants to know what it’s like to land under fire, she could always ask Sen. McCain.

Then there’s Sen. Obama. Much has been made of his elitist approach to politics. Some have likened him to an African-American Adlai Stevenson. When a supporter told Stevenson, the losing Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that thinking people supported him, Stevenson replied, “Yes, but I need to win a majority.”

Watching Obama stumble through his last debate, and listening to him whine about the “tough” questions afterward, I was reminded of another Stevenson quip: “America is a great and wonderful country in which any young person can grow up to be president — and that’s just the risk you take.”

But Obama has bigger problems than his questionable debating skills. It seems he committed a major gaffe while addressing the chablis-and-brie crowd of San Francisco. Speaking to a small audience, Obama made some muddleheaded remarks concerning Middle America: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and … the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.

“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

There’s hypocrisy here (more about that later) and much arrogance. A gaffe, Michael Kinsley observed, is when a politician inadvertently speaks the truth in public. Perhaps it was the wine (in vino veritas) but Obama’s remarks to his San Francisco audience revealed more about his true opinion of Middle America than all his stump speeches ever will.

If you weigh the quote above, with his subsequent comments concerning this matter, it’s clear that Obama believes if you don’t embrace liberalism you must be suffering from some sort of psychological impediment. “Guns” and “religion” have become liberal code words, the implication being that people who value them are dysfunctional.

It can’t be the case that you’re well adjusted and you actually believe in God, or in the right to bear arms, or that you actually believe in getting a handle on our immigration problem. No, that won’t do.

If you don’t endorse liberalism it’s because you’re bitter and frustrated with your lot in life and it’s your irrational temperament that causes you to vote otherwise. Obama’s arrogance is so complete that he cannot imagine anyone rejecting liberalism out of genuine conviction and sound principles.

Then there’s his not so subtle use of the verb “cling,” which gives a literal sense to his words, implying that economic hardship is the only reason Middle Americans revert to such atavistic activities as hunting and churchgoing.

Is Obama so out of touch with Middle America that he thinks most Christians and Jews remain faithful because they’re bitter? Does he really think that most of the people who believe in the right to bear arms do so because they’re bitter?

And since when does endorsing legal immigration while opposing illegal immigration constitute antipathy toward immigrants? Insisting that our government take responsibility for securing our borders strikes me as a perfectly plausible position.

Like so many on the left, Obama deplores “stereotypes” when they are stereotypes he finds insulting, but he’s quick to use his own stereotypes e.g. “a typical white person,” or “bitter” small-town xenophobes, when it suits his own purposes.

A few days after his San Francisco speech, the equivalent of “religion is the opium of the people,” Obama flew to Pittsburgh and delivered a speech on the economy in which he condemned international free trade. Note the hypocrisy. By demonizing international trade while in Pittsburgh, he personified the very trade bashing that he characterized as irrational while speaking to his San Francisco audience. The question arises as to whether Obama’s opposition to NAFTA is genuine, or is he merely pandering to frustrated Americans?

Of course there’s nothing new about politicians pandering to whoever happens to be in front of them. But when you combine Obama’s chameleon-like approach to politics with his 20-year association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his friendship with American terrorist Bill Ayers, and his association with Louis Farrakhan and Tony Rescoe, doubts arise as to whether Obama is the politician who can “unite us.”

We are known by the company we keep. Is Obama comfortable maintaining these relationships? Most Americans are not inclined to vote for a guy who hung around for 20 years listening to his minister denigrate America. Sen. Clinton has a point when she says that had her minister engaged in the same sort of anti-American rhetoric, she would have found another church.

If elected, Obama has promised to raise capital gains taxes, federal income taxes, and payroll taxes. Never mind that 20 percent of those claiming capital gains taxes make less than $50K per year. Obama readily concedes that raising cap gains will result in the federal government collecting less revenue, but he insists on doing so anyway out of a sense of “fairness.” Fairness to who? The middle class?

— Reggie McConnell

Terre Haute

        

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