August 18, 2008
New Column: Pro-Choice McCain Veep Equals Political Suicide
I hate to rain on John McCain's parade right after he trounced Barack Obama at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church forum, for which I heartily applaud him, but McCain's trial balloon consideration of a pro-choice running mate demands a response.
The prospect of an Obama presidency is so horrifying that many conservatives have temporarily put aside their misgivings about McCain to focus on defeating Obama.
They hold their noses on McCain's immigration record, his campaign finance reform zealotry and his newfound acquiescence to the propaganda narrative of environmental extremists. But they are profoundly appreciative of his tougher stance against tax increases and mindful of his undeniable superiority over Obama on foreign policy and national defense. Recent world events, including Russia's naked aggression against Georgia, magnify this already-glaring contrast.
But while national defense necessarily occupies the front burner, McCain would make a fatal mistake to assume that social issues, especially abortion, are ever off an equally blazing front burner for an inestimable number of social conservatives, the Republicans' most reliable voting bloc over the past three decades.
Last Wednesday, McCain "floated the prospect" of picking a pro-choice running mate and said that former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge would be an acceptable -- and possible -- selection.
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 04:23 PM | Printer Friendly
August 14, 2008
Relentless Race Narrative
Sadly, there isn't the slightest chance liberals will forgo the race narrative in this presidential race because painting the other side as racist is essential to their need to feel morally superior.
They can't accept Obama's candidacy as evidence of progress toward racial equality. They can't permit the advancement of colorblindness because they sense it is detrimental both to their political interests and their self-esteem. After all, if liberals lost their self-anointment as moral paragons, they'd have nothing left because their policy agenda has the track record of an Edsel, with the exception that it won't ever be taken off the market.
A mainstream media favorite, MSNBC's Howard Fineman, in a piece criticizing McCain for allegedly painting Barack Obama as less American and patriotic than McCain, couldn't help but throw in a pointed reference to race.
In describing the attendees at a Pennsylvania event for McCain that McCain surrogate Joe Lieberman headlined, Fineman wrote: "The crowd comprised a slice of America that McCain needs if he intends to win Pennsylvania and the election. And that slice is: white (I did not spot a single African American in the crowd), rural, 'exurban,' and mostly Protestant, with local roots stretching back centuries."
See who always brings up this subject? What conservative would spend his time obsessing on skin color to the point of surveying the crowd for evidence of racial diversity? And what conservative would refer to American Caucasians as a "slice" of America, as if whites were some monolithic voting bloc?
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 05:48 PM | Printer Friendly
August 11, 2008
The 'Making Abortion Rare' Hoax
ABC reports that the group "Democrats for Life," whose title gives new meaning to "oxymoronic," decided last week not to press the Democratic Party to restore a life-tolerant "conscience clause" to its party platform. Isn't it time the party quit this charade that it wants to make abortion "rare"?
The "conscience clause," which appeared in the 1996 and 2000 platforms, at least paid lip service to tempering the platform's express support of a woman's "right to choose," stating: The "Democratic Party is a party of inclusion. We respect the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue, and we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party."
But the party ended all pretense of inclusion in 2004 by replacing the "conscience clause" with a statement that Democrats "stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine" abortion rights. And despite the obviously halfhearted efforts of Democrats for Life, the clause will also be absent from the 2008 platform.
As Democrats for Life's Director Kristen Day asked during the 2004 platform debate: "So what are they saying, that because we want to protect the rights of the unborn, our own party says we're automatically Republicans? This has to be one reason that our party is having trouble appealing to many people in churches."
Amen, Kristen. But perhaps instead you ought to be asking yourself why you are still a Democrat and why you gave up in 2008 with barely a whimper. Just how committed can you and your organization possibly be to protecting the lives of the unborn when you shamelessly roll over on the issue that presumably matters the most to you?
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 04:44 PM | Printer Friendly
August 07, 2008
It's Obama's Viability, Not McCain's, That Should Surprise Us
The press is shocked that Barack Obama has "yet to close the sale," given the "political logic" that favors Democrats in this election. They must not have been paying attention during the final segment of the primary season, when Hillary Clinton consistently thrashed the hollow superstar.
That said, Obama's handlers betray not the slightest concern because they believe that despite the statistical tie in the polls, Obama's supporters are much more intense than McCain supporters. "That is going to mean more favorable turnout patterns; it is going to help us register voters; it is going to help us organizationally," said Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe.
Indeed, political analysts have been speculating for months now that Obama could transform presidential politics by energizing a whole new class of voters.
If that's true, McCain has his work cut out for him because the voters Obama is inspiring seem more enamored with his image than who he really is and what he stands for. Being largely apolitical and emotionally driven, they won't be as receptive to the ever-unfolding, troubling revelations about Obama.
While the media are stunned that Obama is not resonating in line with their expectations, others wonder how he can resonate at all, given his McGovernesque, leftist agenda and his damning associations with America-hating preachers (Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger), terrorists and radicals (William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn) and a mentor (Frank Davis) who was a member of the Moscow-controlled Communist Party USA and who, according to Investor's Business Daily, "fled Chicago after the FBI and Congress opened investigations into his 'subversive,' 'un-American activities.'"
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 04:35 PM | Printer Friendly
August 04, 2008
Liberal Press Circles Wagons Around Obama
The liberal media are unhinged over John McCain's recent ad campaign against Barack Obama, which erased Obama's 9-point lead in the polls and tied the race. How dare McCain challenge their anointed one?
Obama is not the only one convinced he is "the one we've been waiting for." The media are also annoyed they have to endure this irritating uprising from McCain, who is officiously intermeddling with the inexorable flow of history.
Sunday show hosts, editorial pages, and both print and TV news stories this past weekend were pregnant with outrage over McCain's "negative" campaigning -- "negative" being defined as anything, truthful or not, that places Obama in a less favorable light than they require.
Their attitude toward Obama is not unlike their approach to the global warming issue: They accept the environmentalists' edict that man-made, apocalyptic warming is occurring, and no one is allowed to dissent.
So if McCain exposes Obama's policy inconsistencies, questions his character, highlights his presumptuousness, inexperience or superficiality, lampoons the media's crush on him, criticizes his injection of race into the campaign, or responds to Obama's attacks, the media yell "foul."
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 04:15 PM | Printer Friendly
July 31, 2008
Obama's GOP Support Groups
I suppose I have to accept the insanity that some glassy-eyed Republicans are considering voting for Barack Obama, but I don't have to like it.
Whether or not this is an example of the liberal media trying to create rather than report news, The New York Times is reporting that small enclaves of Republicans are meeting around the country to discuss their support for Obama. Let's call them "support groups."
One such support group in Indiana is calling its attendees "whispering Republicans." Fittingly, these renegades, as the Times called them, met over iced tea and brownies, as if to signify the sweetness of their move toward the other party's "unity" candidate. At the meeting, they "took turns explaining why they liked Mr. Obama and recalling the strange stares from other Republicans."
Why would they call disapproving stares "strange"? I'd say they were perfectly normal, considering Obama's far-left plans for America.
One member of the Indiana kumbaya group reported: "It was sort of like a group therapy session. We all wanted to make sure we weren't a little crazy."
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 05:31 PM | Printer Friendly
July 28, 2008
Obama's Ongoing Foreign Policy Implosion
There is one unexpected gift that John McCain's presumptive nomination brings to the GOP. McCain was certainly not my choice, but if any other Republican candidate were running, it's unlikely we'd be seeing as much emphasis in the campaign on foreign policy, and Obama's unfolding incompetence in this area might have escaped essential scrutiny.
Democrats were no doubt looking to capitalize on the Iraq issue before it became apparent that the success of the surge had exceeded all but our most optimistic expectations. Because McCain is perceived as one of the most ardent proponents of the surge and Obama fiercely opposed it, Obama finds himself caught in a trap over the entire issue.
Obama's arguments, echoing the perennial anti-Iraq-war line Democrats have been peddling for years now, that we shouldn't have attacked Iraq in the first place are falling flat, given the radical reduction in violence levels the surge has produced. He is reduced to him-hawing, sputtering, spinning and misrepresenting his unequivocal opposition, which he was earlier showcasing -- during the Democratic primary season -- to contrast himself with chief rival Hillary Clinton.
In the process, Obama's worst attributes are coming to the fore: his pride and arrogance, which paralyze him from admitting any real weaknesses, such as his egregious foreign policy judgments, and his astounding shortcomings as a would-be commander in chief, starting with a profound naivete, inexperience and either ignorance or fundamental dishonesty.
Although liberals generally confer a presumption of sophistication and erudition on fellow left-wingers, they have to be shaking their heads in disbelief, wondering just what their nomination contest has wrought. They can't help but realize that Obama is proving himself daily to be woefully unprepared for the presidency.
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 05:26 PM | Printer Friendly
July 24, 2008
The New York Times and Liberal Fairness
I don't know which troubles me more: the liberal media's fawning over Barack Obama or the great number of people who are buying into his mystique so uncritically. But what bothers me more than either of these is the arrogance of the liberal press, which sadly is typical of so many liberals.
The media's deification of Obama is largely responsible for the perception that Obama is superhuman. Their coverage of his European tour -- the most breathtakingly presumptuous junket we've witnessed in American politics in ages -- is but the latest example.
How anyone can fall for the media's Obama rock star charade, given his repeated demonstrations of unfitness for the presidency, is a subject better suited for psychoanalysts.
But we can chalk up the media's irrational exuberance to their eagerness to have someone of like mind -- someone sufficiently socialistic and appeasement-oriented -- back in the Oval Office. With their insane aversion for President Bush and their craving for undefined change, it's hardly surprising they're blind to Obama's increasingly obvious flaws.
What's more difficult to stomach is their reckless obliviousness to their own close-mindedness, intolerance, unreasonableness and conceit -- and their mistaken projection of these attributes onto their conservative opponents.
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 05:20 PM | Printer Friendly
July 21, 2008
Obama: Milking His Failures
Isn't it enormously ironic that Barack Obama now finds himself the unintended beneficiary of the Iraq surge that he so vocally -- and wrongly -- opposed?
It seems that Obama's untimely calls for a withdrawal timetable have lingered long enough to have some merit in the eyes of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Al-Maliki told Der Spiegel, a German magazine, that U.S. troops should withdraw from Iraq "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."
Assuming al-Maliki said it, and there has been some dispute, it doesn't make Obama right -- even now. But it's hard to imagine al-Maliki would be saying anything helpful to Obama's campaign today if the United States had followed Obama's disgraceful surrender policy instead of implementing the surge in 2007 -- over his strenuous objections.
Obama Democrats have been adamantly opposed to our intervention in Iraq from the beginning, including when they voted for it for political expediency and then later claimed they were duped into it.
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Posted by David Limbaugh at 04:23 PM | Printer Friendly
