Now that the bluest of blue states has elected Scott Brown as senator, commentators are widely predicting that President Obama will “pivot” towards the right.
But Obama’s comments since that win show that he has no intention of revamping his core positions. Instead, he has clearly decided that the key to winning back the electorate is to try to snow Americans with misleading claims.
First, Obama told George Stephanopoulos that one of his “mistakes” was that he did not explain his healthcare proposal clearly enough.
“I think we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values,” Obama said. “I think the assumption was, if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on the, you know this provision, or that law, or are we making a good, rational decision here, the people will get it.”
In other words, Americans are so dumb they never understood what the healthcare bill was really about. Even though Obama gave 411 speeches and 158 interviews in his first year in office — usually pushing healthcare — people still didn’t get how beneficial the proposal really was.
In fact, Americans were not dumb. They saw through Obama’s claim that the bill would reduce costs and help the economy. They recognized that it would actually increase premiums while diminishing the quality and availability of healthcare.
Next, Obama claimed that the “same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office.” Obama went on, “People are angry, and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
Thus, voters elected Brown, a conservative, not because they detested Obama’s liberal agenda but because they hated George W. Bush, who has been out of office for more than a year.
If that doesn’t make your head spin, take a look at Obama’s comments in Ohio explaining why the healthcare bill did not pass.
“You’re running headlong into special interests and armies of lobbyists and partisan politics . . . aimed at exploiting fears instead of getting things done, and then you've got ads that are scaring the bejesus out of everybody,” Obama said at Lorain County Community College in Elyria.
Never mind that the healthcare bill was crafted to appeal to special interests such as labor unions and the healthcare industry. Never mind that Obama and fellow Democrats excluded Republicans from the drafting process.
If that comment was not an eye opener, Obama went on to say, “I won’t stop fighting to open up government.”
This from a man who promised the healthcare bill would be drawn up before C-SPAN cameras but presided over a process that was secret and included backroom deals to benefit certain states.
Obama’s distortions have come as no surprise to me. I first experienced them when I wrote a
Newsmax story on Jan. 14, 2008 revealing that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., Obama’s minister and mentor for 20 years, had given an award to Louis Farrakhan for lifetime achievement.
In a comment on the disclosure, Obama claimed the award to Farrakhan was for his efforts to rehabilitate ex-prisoners. But neither Wright’s encomiums about Farrakhan nor the article on the award in the church magazine said anything about ex-prisoners. Instead, they referred to Farrakhan as an “icon” who “truly epitomize[s] greatness.”
Along with Obama’s inexperience and ultra-liberal track record, the press let that distortion slide.
Commentators who say Obama will move to the right base their prediction on the assumption that, like President Clinton, he is a normal politician. They are wrong.
As suggested by the fact that Obama spent 20 years listening to the hate speech of Rev. Wright, Obama is an ideologue who views bending the truth as a legitimate way to achieve his ends.
Now that voters are rejecting Obama’s agenda, the president’s response is not to move to the right. It’s to pivot into unreality.
Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.
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