Incoherence
That’s how Karl Rove describes Obama’s closing message : At an April 2008 fund-raiser in San Francisco, Barack Obama let loose with his famous “they cling to guns or religion” line. Last Saturday at a West Newton, Mass., fund-raiser, the president said, “facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning . . . because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.” Memo to White House: Calling voters stupid is not a winning strategy. The economy and jobs are the No. 1 issue in every poll. Yet Mr. Obama of late has talked about immigration reform and weighed in (unprompted) on the Ground Zero mosque. He devoted Labor Day to an ineffective Mideast peace initiative. He demeans large blocs of voters and now is ending his midterm pitch with attacks on nonexistent foreign campaign contributions and weird assertions that “the Empire is striking back.” Much of the blame lies with the president, who has left his party with an incoherent closing argument 12 days before the election. In a penetrating piece in the New York Times Magazine on Oct. 12, Peter Baker profiles a president who “believes he is the smartest person in any room,” according to one prominent Democratic lawmaker. He and his aides think that the core of their difficulties is “a communications problem” and the result of a “miscalculation” that the president could “forge genuine bipartisan coalitions.” Communications? After the president devoted 58 speeches and events to health care over a 51-week period, his bill grew progressively less popular. The comment about bipartisanship is a joke. As a candidate Mr. Obama spoke about it, but as a president whose party enjoyed massive majorities in both houses of Congress, he ignored it. He could have severely weakened his opposition by drawing them in. Instead, Mr. Obama strengthened Republicans by taunting them with their seeming irrelevance, and he fashioned legislation that only Democrats could vote for. Now many of them will lose their jobs because of their votes. I’m actually kind of surprised Obama hasn’t asked the networks for time to make a last minute TV speech to once again remind us we’re not smart enough to understand his wise ways and that our only hope is continuing Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress. Barry and Michelle did try YouTube for a last minute pitch.
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on October 21, 2010. Filed under