Ba'rorschach Obama
by A.J. Rice
The Barack Obama juggernaut continues as he trounces the Clinton Machine in primary after primary across the nation. In state after state he enters arenas of adulators like Caesar returned from his winter encampment.
While most Americans cannot recall one Obama achievement in all of his years of political activism...they seem to be mesmerized by his didactic "preacherman" speeches that repeat the words "hope" and “change” as if he invented them.
But hope doesn't cover a Marine’s back in Ramadi: his brothers-in-arms do. Hope doesn't keep a Border Patrol agent alert in El Paso, or assist the captain of a Coast Guard cutter off the coast of Charleston. Hope is a thing for children, and when a country is at war, the Oval Office is no place for nursery rhymes.
The ladies and gentlemen of the press can't help but express their infatuation with him. Like a Holy Ghost-filled Pentacostal preacher, Senator Obama has the masses entranced by the rapture of bromides and platitudes. MSNBC's Chris Matthews -- in an unintentional self-parody -- said that an Obama speech caused a shiver to travel up his leg. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, in a recent televised debate asked a question that implied an Obama/Clinton combination would be a magical 'dream ticket.' And yet, for all the media attention directed his way, Ba'rorschach Obama's admirers still seem to be unable to define their messianic savior without a string of substance-free adjectives.
Senator Obama tickles the fantasies of the Starbucks soy latte crowd, but this mass infatuation appears to have infected the nation's working stiffs across many hitherto Clinton-locked demographics such as women and Hollywood’s elite. To newly-eligible voters Obama holds the key to the kingdom of milk and honey, where no welfare state promise is kept unmet.
Obama is a Rorshach test: liberals see in him whatever they like. They are free to assign to him whatever belief they hold most dear because he has no record, no substance to limit their fantasies. He enables bratty child armies of baby boomers to place their political wishes beneath their pillows and dream of a 'post partisan' future, whatever that means.
What most Americans -- even the psuedo-intellectuals who inhabit our nation's newsrooms -- fail to comprehend is that Senator Obama's grip on the masses is another historical throwback. We're supposed to believe that Ba'rorschach Obama is a revolutionary and a reformer. He’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and JFK combined.
Why? Because you've looked into the ink blot and saw it. Because It manifested itself like animals in the clouds? And yet what proof do Obama’s believers have to validate that it's JFK and not Mussolini that they see within the ink? Rhetorical flourishes? What else is there? In truth, nothing.
When a voter asks Senator Obama if it's feasible to enact legislation based on his campaign promises, he simply responds, "Yes, we can!"
Can we eliminate poverty? "Yes, we can!" Confiscate and redistribute wealth? "Yes, we can!" Appoint more Ruth Bader Ginsbergs to the Supreme Court? "Yes, we can!" Abortions on demand? "Yes, we can!" Socialized healthcare? "Yes, we can!" Driver's licenses for illegal aliens? "Si se puede!" Capitulation to terrorists with nothing to lose and heaven to gain? "Yes, we can!" Is this how senator Obama defines 'change'?
For some middle-class families, change could mean eating-out one less night per month. For others, it could mean driving the old car for one more year. But make no mistake about it: 'change' under an Obama presidency for hardworking Americans who sacrifice to achieve wealth, may mean forking over more of their income to a modern-day New Dealer who plans to use $150 billion to create so-called 'green collar' jobs, and another $60 billion to pay for some monstrosity called the National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank. To the average taxpayer that kind of 'change' will leave very little in their wallets.
Above all else, we are electing a Commander-in-Chief. Obama's plan to protect Americans -- what little there is -- should send a shiver down our backs. He wants to withdraw from Iraq immediately, regardless of the consequences. Perhaps abandoning it to al-Queda doesn’t bother him.
As Commander-in-Chief, Obama would surrender us to a UN global tax. He recently introduced a bill that, as one report described it, “…would commit the U.S. to spending 0.7 percent of gross national product on foreign aid, which amounts to a phenomenal 13-year total of $845 billion over and above what the U.S. already spends.”
In researching Ba'rorschach Obama's political history, attempting to discover something of substance, is an impossible task. He won his campaign for the US Senate against an outsider -- Alan Keyes -- whose campaign was as unserious as Dennis Kucinich’s bid for the presidency. Obama's only qualification seemed to be that unlike his original opponent, Jim Ryan, he was never discovered at a sex club. (Maybe he should add that distinction to his anti-Clinton stump speeches.)
There's nothing new about Barack Obama. He's the latest in a long line of foppish flim-flam men who offer verbal enchantment to the voters in order to achieve power. If he wins the Democratic nomination, come November he'll face Senator John McCain, a moderate Republican with his own set of problems to be sure, but a candidate who has proved that he will see the Iraq mission through to victory.
If Obama vanquishes the Clintons and ends up the nominee, he'd better be ready for a campaign fight in the lobby of the Hanoi Hilton. Nothing in his life story has prepared him for it. And nothing in our history has prepared us for the effects if he wins.
get over yourself, redneck.
posted by jhostetler on Feb 19, 2008 at 11:26:22 pm #