Loading Poll...How the Republicans will Re-Elect Obama in 2012
Written by Dr. Michael P. Riccards
Wednesday, 18 August 2010 15:34
Dr. Michael P. Riccards is Executive Director of the Hall Institute of Public Policy – New Jersey. Riccards is a former college president and a presidential scholar who has authored 15 books.
The Johns Hopkins scholar Fouad Ajami has written in the Wall Street Journal an article attacking the so-called obsolescence of Barack Obama. The article is one of the most genuinely unfair if not nasty pieces done on this president. Ajami celebrates what is the end of the magic of 2008. For him the economic stimulus package has failed; there will not be a new New Deal. Mr. Obama’s logic was “Jacobin" – that is, he rules by emergency decrees. The president is insisting on putting his judgment on immigration above the nation’s interest – that is because he has challenged the unconstitutional statue on racial profiling in Arizona.
The Administration believes we are a broken nation, and its role is to tax and reshape the nation to its preferences. Obama has a sense of personal destiny, unlike Ronald Reagan, who showed no signs of narcissism. Obama lacks Bill Clinton’s personal suppleness. He is an untested redeemer who is alien to our American temperament.
This negative sentiment about Obama’s presidency is close to that of Dan Quayle’s son, Ben, running for Congress in Arizona, who insists that Mr. Obama is the worst president in American history. That is as silly as Princeton University Sean Wilentz’s pop article that found George Bush II the worst president.
The radical right and its allies in the media and the Tea Party all proclaim that the forthcoming presidential election will show a final repudiation of Mr. Obama. But in actuality, they have in their craziness re-elected Mr. Obama, and don’t even know it yet. They have tried to picture the president not a true American, despite evidence in the birth records and newspapers of Hawaii that he was born when he said he was. The birther movement is simply racism. It is a way of decrying his legitimacy, and, surprisingly, a lot of Republican regulars agree.
But now they have overreached by starting a campaign to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Even John McCain, (born in Panama to Americans, by the way) has joined with Lindsay Graham of the usually nutty South Carolina, Jon Kyl of Arizona, and the sour GOP majority leaders Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner. Suddenly, respectable Republicans have declared war on the Fourteenth Amendment which simply says that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. shall be citizens.
The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to grant equal rights to slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and, along with the Thirteenth Amendment, was Lincoln’s legacy
This recent political challenge of the radical right will be used to further alienate the Hispanic (and the Asian) voters. They are important voting blcs in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, and California, among others, and they will give the President a second term despite all the criticisms of his first two years. Hispanics are the fastest growing minority group in the United States, as President Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to realize ten years ago.
Republications will focus on a centralized government, wasteful spending, and debt accumulation, but by casting about for an anti-immigrant, Know Nothing exercise they will offend decent Americans, naturalized or not, born of American parents or those foreign born. The consequences of repeal have yet to be fully understood – it could even affect the right to bear arms, oh God, no.
The right loves to attack Mr. Obama and his so-called secular socialism, with its European style welfare state. But wait until the Dems recite the GOP’s desire to end Social Security, Medicare, and the new medical care bill including pre-condition coverage. Suddenly you will get an electorate which remembers why they voted for Obama in the first place. The untested redeemer will look very, very good.
The Administration believes we are a broken nation, and its role is to tax and reshape the nation to its preferences. Obama has a sense of personal destiny, unlike Ronald Reagan, who showed no signs of narcissism. Obama lacks Bill Clinton’s personal suppleness. He is an untested redeemer who is alien to our American temperament.
This negative sentiment about Obama’s presidency is close to that of Dan Quayle’s son, Ben, running for Congress in Arizona, who insists that Mr. Obama is the worst president in American history. That is as silly as Princeton University Sean Wilentz’s pop article that found George Bush II the worst president.
The radical right and its allies in the media and the Tea Party all proclaim that the forthcoming presidential election will show a final repudiation of Mr. Obama. But in actuality, they have in their craziness re-elected Mr. Obama, and don’t even know it yet. They have tried to picture the president not a true American, despite evidence in the birth records and newspapers of Hawaii that he was born when he said he was. The birther movement is simply racism. It is a way of decrying his legitimacy, and, surprisingly, a lot of Republican regulars agree.
But now they have overreached by starting a campaign to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Even John McCain, (born in Panama to Americans, by the way) has joined with Lindsay Graham of the usually nutty South Carolina, Jon Kyl of Arizona, and the sour GOP majority leaders Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner. Suddenly, respectable Republicans have declared war on the Fourteenth Amendment which simply says that all persons born or naturalized in the U.S. shall be citizens.
The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to grant equal rights to slaves freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and, along with the Thirteenth Amendment, was Lincoln’s legacy
This recent political challenge of the radical right will be used to further alienate the Hispanic (and the Asian) voters. They are important voting blcs in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, and California, among others, and they will give the President a second term despite all the criticisms of his first two years. Hispanics are the fastest growing minority group in the United States, as President Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to realize ten years ago.
Republications will focus on a centralized government, wasteful spending, and debt accumulation, but by casting about for an anti-immigrant, Know Nothing exercise they will offend decent Americans, naturalized or not, born of American parents or those foreign born. The consequences of repeal have yet to be fully understood – it could even affect the right to bear arms, oh God, no.
The right loves to attack Mr. Obama and his so-called secular socialism, with its European style welfare state. But wait until the Dems recite the GOP’s desire to end Social Security, Medicare, and the new medical care bill including pre-condition coverage. Suddenly you will get an electorate which remembers why they voted for Obama in the first place. The untested redeemer will look very, very good.
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