The angry August that brought out thousands of protesters to town hall meetings across the country is no longer just about whether or not healthcare reform lives or dies.
The outpouring of fury over healthcare, often expressed in the crudest of terms, threatens to marginalize President Obama's reform agenda across the board.
That's because conservatives and others who oppose Obama's policies broadly see how a month of outrage — both real and manufactured — has brought a major piece of reform to the brink of defeat. That has Obama's adversaries hoping to replicate the wrath of the town halls and aim it against any Obama proposal they wish to defeat.
Don't believe me?
Consider just a couple of statements issued this week against other signature Obama priorities: clean energy and financial regulation reform.
On the question of his energy policies, someone named Karl W. Miller, and identified as "a senior energy executive and institutional investor," put out a press release claiming that "the Obama administration Energy Plan has become completely unhinged and is now threatening the long term stability of the U.S. energy market."
(That later in the statement Mr. Miller associates himself with Enron, the epitome of corporate greed, ought to call his entire thesis into question, but that's an argument for another time.)
Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce issued a statement of its own assailing the "So-Called Consumer Financial Protection Agency" that Obama wants to create to prevent future financial and foreclosure meltdowns, giving consumers added economic protection.
What do these two statements have in common? Each one uses overheated rhetoric to make their points. One accuses Obama of offering a policy that is "completely unhinged," while the other attempts to dismiss out-of-hand Obama's intent to create a financial protection agency by applying the term "so-called" to it.
Article comments
1 - Arch Conservative
As a conservative Republican, seeing Obama in action has given me a newfound appreciation for Bill Clinton.
Although Obama and Clinton may both have D beside their names, they are nothing alike. Where Bill Clinton was a liberal leaning pragmatist who governed as a centrist and would compromise on anything if it made himself look good and stay in power, Obama is a die hard leftist hell bent on changing the very fabric of society into some idealized socialist utopia that was implanted into his mind at a very young age by the Bill Ayers's and Saul Alinskies of the world.
While Obama has paid lip service to the contrary in every teleprompted speech, it's become quite clear what he is really all about. This is being reflected in his tanking poll numbers and the anger we're seeing at town halls.
His overconfidence and arrogance has led him to pick a fight he cannot win, a fight that the Clinton's lost.
Last night's speech was just more of the same tired, unbelievable rhetoric that's been coming this administration for the last six weeks. As usual the Obama propagandists are on overdrive this morning spinning the speech into the second Gettysburg address.
But just because Obama gave another speech, the days are getting shorter and the temperature a little cooler does not mean the opposition to his socialist agenda will relent. In fact there is a major March on Washington scheduled for this Saturday which will be attended by hundreds of thousands if not millions of American citizens. There is no doubt that the Obama media (NBC, ABC, NYT, CBS, MSNBC, CNN etc) will fail to cover it but this and other protests will continue to grow in size and ferocity regardless of the propaganda being put out by the white house and it's minions.
This will not end well for Obama. Nothing, not even that political fossil Bill Clinton, can save him now.
2 - Silas Kain
I love ultra right panic attacks. They're desperately clinging to life and in their desperation are grasping at straws. This is a defining moment for the Republican Party. It's now or never time, closet Republicans. There is no time like the present to go after the ultra right. Take the gloves off, it's time to get politically bloody. As long as they control the GOP, the Democrats are going to become a political monopoly. Granted, we really haven't had a two party system in decades since members of both parties have been suckling the lobbyist teat. It's time for a strategy change. It's time for a Republican Revolution which drowns the far right in political pesticides and renders them as impotent as they are in the boudoir.
3 - zingzing
silas: "It's time for a Republican Revolution which drowns the far right in political pesticides and renders them as impotent as they are in the boudoir."
it's only their lack of belief in condoms ("don't worry about it baby, i'll pull out,") that creates another generation of republicans. where do these hicks come from otherwise?
disco, disco, disco.
4 - Arch Conservative
yuck yuck yuck
Meanwhile back on planet earth Obama's poll numbers are still falling, it's almost October, cap and trade is still dead, Acorn is under investigation for voter fraud, and there's still no Obamacare