Is This What You Had In Mind?
Many people on the left have been highly critical of those on the right for speaking out against President Obama. They seem to have forgotten their behavior over the course of the Bush Presidency, and all of the sudden they want people to look for the good in our President and overlook the bad. Well, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in his first interview since undergoing major heart surgery, seemed rather kind to President Obama in talking about some of his policies. Here are some of the highlights as reported by The Hill from the NBC interview.
"I think he's learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate. So I think he's learned from experience. And part of that experience was the Democrats having a terrible showing last election."
"I think he's learned that he's not going to be able to close Guantanamo," Cheney said. "That it's — if you didn't have it, you'd have to create one like that. You've got to have some place to put terrorists who are combatants who are bound and determined to try to kill Americans."
"As I say, I think he's found it necessary to be more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did," Cheney said. "They've gotten active, for example, with the drone program, using Predator and the Reaper to launch strikes against identified terrorist targets in the various places in the world."
So, how will the left react to this? Will they applaud Cheney for speaking highly of President Obama? Here is what Earl Ofari had to say over at Huffington Post.
But Cheney and other GOP leaders would have continued to harp on that no matter how many GOP friendly compromises Obama made or will make. The one term presidency line would be repeatedly bandied about no matter what Democrat sat in the Oval Office. Obama was deemed especially ripe for the GOP pickings because he was African-American, and at least in the early going of his administration, the GOP prayer was that he would say and do something that would fan the racial fires, and give the GOP the chance to fully play the race card, and paint him as a closet racial panderer. The next best thing to that was the tag of closet Marxist and communist. This ploy has largely petered out. But the one term line will stay because it has to.
Cheney's war on Obama is about the GOP regaining power, control, political dominance, protecting its corporate and financial interests, its strict construction definition and enforcement of the laws, and more broadly the imposing of its philosophical view of how government should be run. The presidency is the grand prize that pulls the political, economic and philosophical threads on how government and power will be exercised together for the GOP. It's not enough for the GOP to win big in the House and gain valuable ground in the Senate as the party did during the November mid-terms. Senate Democrats will still largely march to the president's tune and will stymie any of the wilder, way out initiatives and pieces of legislation that the Tea Party influenced House will pass to thumb its nose at, embarrass and weaken the Obama administration.
It's funny how Earl says that the one term line will stay "because it has to". Dick Cheney just got through saying some nice things about Obama, and what does Earl focus on? The "one term President" line. Why? Because he has to.
He has to focus on that because Cheney was right. Even in Earl's article, he concedes that Obama has moved to the right. Yet he can't come to grips with the truth of Cheney's statement. Cheney even pointed out that the Obama Administration has continued enhanced interrogation. I'm sure that Earl would love to argue that point, but there is this little problem of rendition. President Obama didn't end "torture", he outsourced it. He still hasn't shut down GITMO, and he has put an American Citizen who has not been charged with a crime let alone convicted on the C.I.A. kill or capture list.
Yes, oh lefties, be careful what you wish for. Earl's article can quickly be summed up in one short sentence. Cheney's belief that Obama will be a one term president is based on Obama's promises, not his actions.
This leaves the left to attack the one not-so-nice thing that Cheney said about Obama, rather than applauding the many nice things he said. It is precisely the actions of Obama that have helped his poll numbers of late that people like Ofari are fuming about. So you can think of the one term comment like this, Earl. Perhaps Cheney said it not because the Independents will come out in droves to support whoever runs against Obama, but rather because people on the left like yourself will stay home in their parents basement this time still fuming over the way Obama has abandoned the very principals he claimed to agree with you on.
