Charles Krauthammer: Obama’s campaign for class resentment (reprise)"This is populism so crude that it channels not Teddy Roosevelt so much as Hugo Chavez. But with high unemployment, economic stagnation and unprecedented deficits, what else can Obama say?
"He can’t run on stewardship. He can’t run on policy. His signature initiatives — the stimulus, Obamacare and the failed cap-and-trade — will go unmentioned in his campaign ads. Indeed, they will be the stuff of Republican ads.
"What’s left? Class resentment. Got a better idea?"
Michael Barone calls out Obama "A heavyweight writes bluntly about the shameful speech President Obama gave in Osawatomie, Kansas (see also: Obama's Kansas Declaration).
"Among the most respected of political pundits, Michael Barone occupies a special niche. As the co-author of the Almanac of American Politics, he is conceded to be one of the most knowledgeable and even handed of political writers.
He writes a takedown of the unscrupulous rhetoric of the president in The Examiner"
Democrats like to think of themselves as the party of smart people. And over the last four years we have heard countless encomiums, and not just from Democrats, of the intellect and perceptiveness of Barack Obama. But a reading of the text of Obama’s December 6 speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, billed as one of his big speeches of the year, shows him to be something like the opposite. Even by the standards of campaign rhetoric, this is a shockingly shoddy piece of work.....
Those who pride themselves on belonging to the party of smart people should be embarrassed.
Just as ridicule of his sexual issues didn't bother Bill Clinton, neither do columns about Obama's disastrous presidency seem to concern him. Liberals are obtuse. TD
Powerline:
Obama’s Osawatomie decree "The speech is important from a variety of perspectives. Perhaps most significantly, the speech previewed Obama’s reelection campaign themes; insert groans here. To some extent it shows Obama hitching his wagon to the Occupy crowd and provides another case of his leading from behind. It sinks to the level of left-wing tripe. Obama’s heart and mind are full to overflowing with this stuff."
Update: What’s the Matter with Obama’s Kansas Speech? Nothing fair about it.
"Obama takes the easy way out by pretending that the issues have a simplicity and the answers a clarity that they lack, and that he is telling self-evident truths. But what he’s really doing is pandering to a schoolyard mentality of envy that says, “It’s not fair if other people have more stuff than I do; they must be cheating and they should pay me back” — and that government’s just the one to do it."
Update: The president sounds more like a Corleone than a Roosevelt. By Daniel Henninger, WSJ"In fact, the Osawatomie speech was not given by the President of the United States. It was given by the leader of the Democratic Party. "
....
There is that defining moment when Michael Corleone says to Fredo, his brother, "You're nothing to me now." When even as party leader, a president of the United States gives a major speech in which people get singled out repeatedly as basically enemies of "the middle class," one has to wonder if they are nothing to him."
....
"What the Democratic base would get out of an Obama re-election is political power, which counts for something. It lets you tell other people what to do. But nothing in that Kansas speech, especially the wealth taxes, will produce real growth in the dry economy America has had for three years. Strong growth is the only solution to the Osawatomie catalog of horrors. If he wins, five years from now, the president's base will be about where it and nearly everyone else is today, trying to stay afloat in Barack Obama's still waters."
