President Barack Obama may have delivered his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, but he actually had just one audience in mind: Hillary Clinton, political strategist Dick Morris said Wednesday on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
Describing the speech as "the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party," Morris said the president is calculating whether the party will move to the center as it did under Bill Clinton or if it will it continue to tack left as it has done under Obama.
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"Obama was really giving this speech to set out a clear agenda for his base, for the left of the party," Morris said.
"A series of objectives and goals that he knows Congress won't pass, but by putting it out on the table and advocating, giving it that level of publicity, he's hopefully in his view, creating a storm among the base that will capture Hillary and require her to run on that platform. In effect, he was writing the 2016 platform for the Democratic Party and Hillary, by the way Tweeted as soon as the speech was over that he etched out a far-reaching and bold agenda for the country, so she seems to be taking the bait."
Obama's
hidden agenda is to make sure the Democrat Party has "permanent dominance" and to do that he must ensure that "the left controls the Democratic Party and that's what yesterday's speech was all about."
Hillary Clinton, who sent out a Twitter message following Obama's speech voicing support, is hamstringing herself should she make it to the general election should she run for the White House in 2016, Morris said.
"By embracing this left agenda she's really ultimately hurting her chances of winning the general election and Obama knows that and he knows that Bill and Hillary would like to move to the center once they get the nomination and he's trying to make it impossible for them to do so," he said.
Obama is laying out the "wish list of the left's agenda" now "in order to mousetrap Hillary to be sure she's pinned to it."
Also made clear in the president's Tuesday address was the his decision not to cooperate with the Republican-controlled Congress, according to Morris, author of
"Power Grab: Obama's Dangerous Plan for a One-Party Nation".
"He's made the opposite decision from the one Bill Clinton made when the Republicans took Congress in 1994 and the Republicans are happy to oblige him," said Morris. "The Republican Party will pass a series of bills that are their agenda, their platform for 2016, pass the House, pass the Senate, put it on Obama's desk and let a pile of vetoes emerge one after the other.
"Vetoing the Keystone pipeline, vetoing the 40 hour work week for Obamacare full-time definition, vetoing Iran's sanctions and let those vetoes pile up and that becomes the Republican agenda in 2016."
And Obama will stockpile proposals that don't go anywhere "but will animate the left in country for decades to come," Morris said.
"Let's remember that ever since Truman and Johnson and Obama have passed the bulk of the left's agenda, they don't have a lot left. There's not a lot of things that they want and now Obama has outlined it."
The president has a long-term goal of increasing the number of Americans who receive entitlements and decreasing the number who have full-time jobs, resulting in fewer people on the tax rolls and placing the burden on taxpayers, he added.
"At the moment, they are about evenly balanced," Morris said. "You have about 50 percent that pays some income tax and 50 percent that do not. With this proposal, he will skew that. We don't have the stats yet and we don't have his exact proposal, but probably more like 55-45 in favor of the non-tax payers."
"If you're going to cut taxes on low income people, that's fine, lower the tax rate so that everybody still pays something, just less, or adopt other policies that encourage lower tax payments, but still build in the necessity for tax payments."
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