David Limbaugh

New Column: Obama Says He Deserves a Second Term; Let's Consider

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:38:58 -0500

President Obama told NBC's Matt Lauer in an interview Sunday, "I deserve a second term." Well, let's see.

He had the courage to tell the Supreme Court off for daring to defy him in its campaign finance law ruling. And he did it during his State of the Union speech, when they weren't in a position to object, showing just what a marvelous tactician he is.

He was not about to be stymied by an obstructionist Republican House that didn't buy into his Euro-fashionable idea that we're all going to die from catastrophic man-made global warming. So when those knuckleheads wouldn't pass cap and trade, his Environmental Protection Agency lawlessly imposed its own emission standards. He showed those Republicans.

He was sick and tired of our being in Iraq, an action approved by a joint resolution of Congress, so he telegraphed a date certain to withdraw. But he wasn't going to let Republicans think he couldn't flex his own muscles in the nominal cause of freedom, so he one-upped those dolts again by intervening in Libya without consulting Congress at all, much less getting its approval.

When he crammed through Obamacare against the people's will, he adroitly claimed he was acting on our behalf. Every year he's been in office, his deficits have greatly exceeded $1 trillion, and he is on course to double the national debt in five years and triple it in 10. How many presidents could pull that off?

New Column: What Is It About 'No Free Lunch' That Obama Doesn't Understand?

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 17:22:11 -0500

Obama's latest homeowner mortgage relief plan is perfect for him: It both is consistent with his ideology -- duh -- and allows him to buy more votes with someone else's money, all the while pretending there is in fact such a thing as a free lunch.

The painfully superficial liberal approach to poverty gets old, as does its corollary tenet that conservatives who reject liberals' failed ideas lack compassion. Indeed, Obama seemed to devote half the words in his prayer breakfast speech to proving that Scripture compels liberal policies.

Obama's latest proof that he cares more than we do is his proposal to "give every responsible homeowner in America a chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks."

This has all the elements. He frames the program as applying only to responsible mortgagors; he personally gets credit for handing out this money from his legendary "stash"; government, not the market, dictates what the interest rate will be; government will wave its magic wand forbidding "red tape" and bureaucratic obstacles; and banks, one of his favorite targets, are demonized and lined up to be punished.

But haven't we had enough of this man's top-down manipulation of the market in the guise of helping people? Is he ever to be held accountable for similar failed programs he's already tried? How about that $75 billion mortgage relief plan he implemented in 2009? You know, the one he said would "give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild"? The one he said would save 7 million to 9 million mortgages.

New Column: Let's Honor, Not Stretch, the Buckley Rule

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:48:18 -0500

In the intense heat of the present, it is easy to forget even the relatively recent past, but it seems to me that this GOP primary season is more acrimonious than the past few, probably because the stakes are so high.

When I've noted that this is the most important presidential election of our lifetimes, a few excitability-resistant conservative friends have said, "They have been saying that about every election for more than a generation." My response to that is:

"Yes, and it's probably been true every time. As we march inexorably toward socialism by incremental steps, the need to elect political leaders to take steps to reverse it increases on a linear plane. But with President Obama, we're advancing not by incremental steps, but by giant leaps, hurtling toward statism with alarming alacrity. Every day that passes before we implement entitlement reform, for example, the geometric accumulation of vested benefits makes reform more imperative -- and more difficult. So yes, every national election of the past generation or so has probably been more important than the immediately preceding one, but 2012 is dramatically more urgent. Based on the cavalier manner with which Obama is lawlessly thwarting the Constitution and the people's will, it is hard to imagine what kind of tyrannical executive power grabs he'd try (and accomplish) if re-elected, even with an opposing Congress. We are already on autopilot to national bankruptcy, and if we don't
ram it into reverse soon, America as we have known it could be gone, at least for many years."

Conservatives are fighting among themselves about not just who the best candidate would be but also who is most electable. Sure, electability has always been an issue, but now some are saying that to support someone, it's essential not only that we show he is electable but also that he is the most electable. This amounts to replacing the "Buckley rule" -- that "we should support the most conservative candidate who is electable" -- with "we should support the most electable candidate, provided he is at least marginally conservative."

New Column: Obama's Misstatements on the Union

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 17:42:03 -0500

Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation.

Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space.

Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record.

He said, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more." But everyone knows he's had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, "Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse."

Obama said, "I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors." Well, that's mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the "programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors" is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan's plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.

New Column: The Question Is Not 'Electability,' but 'Re-electability'

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:08:39 -0500

Republican internecine squabbles this primary season seem to turn on the vying candidates' respective electability against incumbent Barack Obama. But if even uber-liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has finally awakened to President Obama's arrogance, what does it say about his electability?

It's understandable that a lib would take so long to turn on the messiah, having invested so much in his presidency. But I wonder whether these people ever realize how late they are to the party and how utterly devoid of profundity their belated epiphanies are.

Dowd starts off her latest column describing Obama's opening appearance at a fundraiser at the Apollo in Harlem: "For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected."

Unless you are a liberal utopian, such as my friend Mark Levin describes in his latest masterpiece, "Ameritopia," you wouldn't place so much faith in one deliberately mysterious man to usher in a new, unspecified era, and you especially wouldn't hold on to the painfully unrealistic hope that after three years, this man will finally present himself to be someone he has never been.

Savor a few of the tardy revelations Dowd has now come to see with pungent clarity:

New Column: Middle America Longs for Conservatives To Stand Up To Liberal Bullying

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 16:58:37 -0500

I wish Republican politicians would have faith in the largely conservative electorate and not behave as though they'll make themselves unelectable unless they pander to Generic Moderate. Who is that guy, anyway? Have you ever met him?

Recently, we've seen a few examples of the liberal narrative's rearing its oppressive head and starkly different reactions to it. The first was Mitt Romney's reportedly telling The Wall Street Journal that as a wealthy person, he thinks he lacks the credibility to aggressively push tax cuts. Mitt is also looking timid about releasing his tax returns. He needs to fight back -- consistently -- instead of surrendering to the liberal narrative that success is evil. Mitt should take a lesson from Newt Gingrich on counterpunching against false liberal charges and innuendo.

Newt put on a clinic in his defiant response to moderator Juan Williams' racially charged questions during the Fox News GOP debate in South Carolina.

I honestly like Juan Williams and believe, based on observing him over the years, that he's a decent human being with a good heart. But for whatever reason, regrettably, he was wearing race on his sleeve that evening, and his race-baiting line of questions, in my opinion, was indefensible.

Juan first tried to lay a race trap for Rick Santorum when asking him whether the time "has come to take special steps to deal with the extraordinary level of poverty afflicting one race of Americans."

New Column: Mark Levin's 'Ameritopia'

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:14:10 -0500

Mark Levin's hard work in researching, organizing and writing his new book, "Ameritopia," will be a blessing for all who read it.

Countless books chronicle the forward march of the liberal agenda and attempt to deconstruct the fallacies in modern leftist thinking. Many critique the statist policies the left has imposed on us the past half-century and their disastrous effects on our culture, our economy and our national security.

Few modern books, however, direct our attention to first principles, perhaps assuming people implicitly understand the philosophical and ideological underpinnings of conservative thinking, and even fewer truly explore the anatomy of the liberal vision.

In "Liberty and Tyranny," Levin laid out the conservative vision and contrasted it with the liberal vision. But "Ameritopia" examines more deeply the historical and philosophical roots of the utopian ideal, for it is that ideal that has always animated the liberal worldview.

Levin takes us through the seminal thoughts of some of the most noted political philosophers and writers who laid out the utopian vision -- from Plato to Thomas More, Thomas Hobbes and Karl Marx -- and then unpacks the contrasting vision of John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu and others whose ideas greatly influenced America's founders.

Everything Is At Stake, All Right

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:21:58 -0500

On this we can agree with President Obama: Everything he stands for is at stake in 2012.

Obama told 500 fawning sycophants in Chicago that he is unrepentant about his policy agenda and intends to treat us to more of the same, much more, in a second term.

Obama said, "Everything that we fought for is now at stake in this election." Lest there be no mistake, he repeated the message in the smaller settings of private homes.

We can endlessly debate whether he is such a devoted ideologue that he's blind to his policy failures, whether he's willing to sacrifice the economy and the fiscal integrity of the United States for his perceived higher good of radical redistribution, or whether he really intends to do harm, but these are moot questions anymore. Under any of these possibilities, the fact remains that he is hellbent on accelerating his present course, not reversing it, on dictating, not working within his constitutional constraints, much less building a bipartisan consensus.

Hubris and defiance are his trademarks, not humility. He said, "If you're willing to work even harder in this election than you did in the last election, I promise you, change will come."

This should send cold chills up our spines. By "change," he means more of his unpopular, failed agenda. He has repeatedly indicated that he is frustrated with the process of republican government and that he would be much more comfortable as a dictator.

This Week's MSM Bias Award Goes to George Stephanopoulos

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:58:33 -0500

We've been dealing with liberal media bias for years, but George Stephanopoulos' performance in the Republican presidential debate Saturday night in New Hampshire was particularly egregious.

In many of these MSM-moderated debates, liberal moderators have tried to stir up personal fights between candidates, which diverts our focus from more important issues and, before national television audiences, shifts attention far away from Barack Obama and his disastrous agenda.

Yes, these are debates among Republicans and designed to bring out distinctions among the candidates, but it should be up to the candidates to initiate and define those distinctions, and it is improper for the moderators to continually steer the debate away from substance and into the personal. With the moderators constantly stirring up catfights, liberal ends are served, both in placing Republican candidates in the worst light and in creating the illusion that their primary differences are with one another rather than Obama.

If you doubt this, then ask yourself how often in Saturday night's debate the candidates were given an opportunity -- instead of showing how corrupt, immoral or inexperienced their GOP rivals are -- to distinguish their policy proposals from the others in the context of the Obama record. The narrative in these debates ought to be how each of the candidates is better-equipped than the others to reverse Obama's agenda.

In addition to misdirecting the debates substantively, the liberal moderators have also, too often, injected themselves into the debates as if they were either driven by their irrepressible egos to make themselves players rather than facilitators or so ideologically revolted by the GOP's policies that they were compelled to argue Obama's side in his absence. The moderators shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways. If they are going to direct the debate solely toward differences among the GOP candidates, they shouldn't present Obama's side for him, giving him and the liberal position a free ride.

Obama's Motto

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 22:29:09 -0500

President Obama is calling for dramatic defense cuts that could threaten our national survival while obstructing structural reforms to our entitlement programs that are essential for our national financial survival. It just doesn't get much worse than this.

President George W. Bush attempted in good faith to reform Social Security, and Democrats savaged him. Rep. Paul Ryan proposed a comprehensive financial plan that would, as painlessly as possible, restore national fiscal sanity, and Obama and his Democrats have misrepresented the plan (saying it would end Medicare) and used class warfare and fear-mongering to kill it in the cradle.

Indeed, Republicans have repeatedly submitted and passed comprehensive and detailed budget plans to restore our financial solvency, and Senate Democrats have blocked every one of them. Meanwhile, the Democratic Senate hasn't produced a budget in almost three years. Three years!

It is undeniable, undebatable, irrefutable, inarguable and certain that the United States is spending at a level that will destroy it. It is equally indisputable that Democrats have shown no willingness to join Americans in tackling the problem.

Every time you confront a liberal with these incontrovertible facts, his response is not: "You are simply wrong." It is, "Bush started this." Well, Bush did spend too much, but he was a piker compared with Obama. But it doesn't much matter who caused it anymore, does it?

Blind to Their Liberal Biases

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:39:13 -0500

I think it's very difficult for any of us to be objective about any subject, especially something we care deeply about, but my objective observation is that liberals tend to be less aware of and less willing to admit their biases.

We see this often, which I'll get to, but first, let me relate how this phenomenon most recently came to my attention.

In a conversation with a saleswoman for online college courses, I expressed my disappointment that the professor of a religion course I was considering for purchase is an avowed atheist. I said that if I were going to spend time studying the subject, I'd prefer the professor share my Christian worldview.

Don't misunderstand. I think it can be profitable to learn what nonbelieving "scholars" teach about the Bible, but the point I want to discuss here is the woman's response.

She maintained that it is preferable, for this largely secular course on the Bible, to have a professor who can approach the subject from an objective, critical and historical perspective, as if a believing professor would be incapable of that approach. But is that true?

Sometimes Caution Can Backfire

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 18:51:54 -0500

There seems to be a common line of demarcation separating two basic factions on the political right in the various skirmishes we have fought against Barack Obama, from their markedly different approaches to the budget battles to their differences in sizing up the GOP presidential candidates.

On one side we have the more moderate group, which is more cautious, less risk averse, less excitable, self-consciously pragmatic and more tolerant toward an establishment ruling class, even if not per se establishment itself. On the other side are those who perceive more urgency in our current national condition, are more adamant about adhering to conservative principles to reverse this catastrophe and reject the charge that they are recklessly purist.

Many from the first group have urged restraint and pragmatism in the budget negotiations, insisting it was too risky to force a government shutdown with Obama, that the big prize is 2012 and the best way to secure it is to avoid taking a hard line, which would hand Obama 2012 propaganda ammunition.

In each round of budget battles, with a spirit of defeatism and resignation, they warned against Republican brinksmanship, because they were convinced Obama would automatically win every PR victory. It was as though they had forgotten who’d won the 2010 congressional elections.

Obviously, they didn’t believe Republicans could convince the electorate that they had the better argument, even though they were the ones drawing a line in the sand on spending, which was what caused the crisis. Also, they had no confidence that Republicans could persuade voters that Democrats were lying when they said that the government would actually default on its major obligations.

Obama and Holder Should Put the Race Card back in the Deck

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 19:23:18 -0500

President Obama led us to believe that he would be a post-racial president who would bring the races together, but it's gotten to where you can't criticize this most leftist administration in American history without someone accusing you of racism.

The most recent example involves criticism of Attorney General Eric Holder over Fast and Furious, an operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which was overseen by the Justice Department. It involved the indirect sale of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, which resulted in some 300 killings in Mexico, including the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Throughout, despite having received detailed memos from DOJ officials about it, Holder has denied he was aware of it.

The scandal and Holder's stonewalling have led to some 60 congressmen demanding his resignation, and 75 cosponsoring a House resolution calling for a "no-confidence" vote on his performance as attorney general.

Holder has defiantly denied culpability, and President Obama, without betraying the slightest concern, has proclaimed his complete confidence in Holder. In a New York Times interview, Holder suggested race was partially driving a "more extreme segment" against him and Obama.

Holder said, "This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our relationship, and, you know, the fact that we're both African-American." When pressed for some proof to support Holder's allegation, the Justice Department did not respond. Nor has the White House distanced itself from Holder's comments.

About Those Self-Evident Truths

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 18:45:40 -0500

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident..." What truths? What has happened to our passion for liberty? I am concerned that we conservatives, instead of making our case as fearless champions of liberty, are too often on the defensive, preoccupied with trying to prove we aren't the demons the left says we are.

In the GOP primary contest, you'll hear one candidate scolding the others for lacking compassion, another demagoguing a rival for advocating essential entitlement reform, and another shaming an opponent for being too wealthy.

Shouldn't our side do a better job of proudly proclaiming our case for what we believe in rather than have our tails tucked between our legs, apologizing for conservatism and all too often neglecting our first principles?

Because we face an existential threat to the nation in our exploding discretionary and entitlement spending, we rightly aim our rhetoric against the deficits and the debt. That's critically important, but in the process, do we forget to explain that we favor smaller government also as a matter of principle? Do we make the case that we oppose a bigger and more intrusive government because a) it is incompatible with what we stand for -- robust political liberty -- and b) other than metastasizing and swallowing up the private sector and our individual liberties, government does only a few things well?

Likewise, do we connect the dots between our confiscatory tax policies and the diminution of our liberties, demonstrating a nexus between oppressive taxes and serfdom? Do we protest that we are already overtaxed and that an onerous tax system, enforced by a menacing federal agency, devours our political liberty?

Obama's '60 Minutes' Interview Gives Grading on a Curve New Meaning

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:44:01 -0500

The most disturbing aspect of President Obama's "60 Minutes" interview is how sincere he sounded when misrepresenting his record. I'm not sure whether I would prefer that he be lying or self-deluded, but there's plenty of each to go around.

Obama is a left-wing ideologue, a true believer, who is convinced that his agenda is mandated by a superior moral imperative (from who knows where) and that it must be advanced irrespective of the consequences, because no matter how bad they might be, they would have been worse without his agenda.

Indeed, such is his blind faith that his policy failures reinforce rather than shatter his belief system, and he becomes more delusional the more he fails and has to rationalize those failures.

The upshot of his message to his interviewer, Steve Kroft, was that he deserves the highest marks for all "things that don't have to do with the economy and don't have to do with Congress."

So despite his muddled, ad hoc approach to foreign policy: his mistreatment of Israel, his pattern of insulting foreign leaders, his fair-weather support for some democratic movements and betrayal of others (Iran, Honduras), his manifest unpopularity in the Muslim world, and his gutting of our military defenses (F-22, our missile defenses and Europe's, and our nuclear arsenal) while China, Russia, Iran and others augment theirs, he claims that we are now respected again around the world and that we are stronger.