Dr Krauthammer is Bringing Obama Back to Earth

It’s not just that NBC admitted that “it’s hard to stay objective covering this guy.” Or that Newsweek had a cover article so adoring that one wonders what is left for coverage of the Second Coming. Or that Obama’s media acolytes wax poetic that his soaring rhetoric and personal biography will abolish the ideological divide of the 1960s — as if the division between left and right, between free markets and the welfare state, between unilateralism and internationalism, between social libertarianism and moral traditionalism are residues of Sergeant Pepper and the March on Washington. The baby boomers in their endless solipsism now think they invented left and right — the post-Enlightenment contest of ideologies that dates back to the seating arrangements of the Estates-General in 1789.

The freest of all passes to Obama is the general neglect of the obvious central contradiction of his candidacy — the bipartisan uniter who would bring us together by transcending ideology is at every turn on every policy an unwavering, down-the-line, unreconstructed, uninteresting, liberal Democrat.

He doesn’t even offer a modest deviation from orthodoxy. When the Gang of 14, seven Republican and seven Democratic senators, agreed to restore order and a modicum of bipartisanship to the judicial selection process, Obama refused to join lest he anger the liberal base.

Special interests? Obama is a champion of the Davis-Bacon Act, an egregious gift to Big Labor that makes every federal public-works project more costly. He not only vows to defend it, but proposes extending it to artificially raise wages for any guest worker program.

On Iraq, of course he denigrates the surge. That’s required of Democratic candidates. But he further claims that the Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda and joined us — get this — because of the Democratic victory in the 2006 midterm elections.

Obama has yet to have it pointed out to him by a mainstream interviewer that the Anbar Salvation Council was founded by Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha two months earlier. Obama has yet to be asked why any Sunni would choose to join up with the American invaders at precisely the time when Democrats would have them leaving — and be left like the pro-American Vietnamese or the pro-French Algerians to be hunted and killed when their patrons were gone. That’s suicide.

Even if you believe that a Clinton restoration would be a disaster, you should still be grateful for New Hampshire. National swoons, like national hysterias, obliterate thought. The New Hampshire surprise has at least temporarily broken the spell. Maybe now someone will lift the curtain and subject our newest man from hope to the scrutiny that every candidate deserves.

Years ago Hillary said, “You don’t have to fall in love, you just have to fall in line.” Unfortunately for her the media’s fallen in love… with Obama.

Here’s Fred mopping the floor with Huck:

Today JASmius of Hard Starboard posted A Mute Commentary pointing to Giuliani,

Nice to see that Fred did well. One could make the case that Fred has topped every debate he’s been in. Regrettably, debates do not win elections, and they’re not getting FDT out of single digits. How much less so this cycle, when substance looks more and more like it’s being abandoned in favor of emotion and symbolism (Huckles, Obama, and Hillary’s crocodile tears) and sheer mass amnesia (McCain).

I’m a little surprised that Romney is melting under the pressure. But he should be scared, his modest, early delegate lead not withstanding. There’s no way he’s going to “second place” himself to the nomination, no matter how wishfully the Romneylans think. His entire strategy was predicated on winning Iowa and New Hampshire. Now he has to win Michigan, or it’ll be perceived as strike three for his campaign. And the latest polling composite there has McCain pulling slightly ahead.

I agree with Patrick Basham (or, since I posted the idea before he did, it may be more accruate to say that he agrees with me) that the ultimate beneficiary of Huck’s and McCain’s double-team on Romney will be Giuliani, who is poised to swoop in, take Florida and clean up on February 5th. Not only is he better equipped organizationally, financially, and notoriatily to wage a national campaign than “Sailor” or the Rev’rund, but after the “near-death experience” through which conservatives are currently suffering at the spectre of the two least trustworthy, left-most Republicans in the field winning the first two “bellweather” nominating contests, even Rudy’s social liberalism will gain a whole new palatability if he can enable the GOP to avert both the complete evisceration of the Reagan coalition and total disaster in November. Giuliani-Thompson, anyone?

Yeah, I’m the guy who spent the past year saying that “America’s Mayor” was unnominatable. But I could never have imagined that the twenty-first century Elmer Gantry and Darth Queeg would emerge as frontrunners, either. We do live in “interesting” times. And that isn’t a good thing.

What is interesting in both articles is that the top spots are in contention. A year ago things were looking like the annointed would take it all.

Now, who knows.

Betsy also notices that “Republicans must be in the position of not only considering which candidate they like the most, but also vote defensively for the one best able to win the general election.”

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