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Barack Obama: Not Moderate.

Barack Obama. He's a media darling. He routinely receives praise for being a "moderate" from talking heads and columnists alike.

So what did Obama do to earn such esteem? What specific actions or words earned him his moderate reputation?

It couldn't have been his October 2002 speech to a group of anti-war activists:

"What I am opposed to is the attempt by potential hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics."

So the liberation of Iraq was cooked up by the ubiquitous, mysterious Karl Rove in order to distract Americans from a (Bush-induced, of course) Hooverian economic meltdown.

Do moderates typically accuse the President of the United States of concocting wars for political purposes? Sounds more Michael Moorean than Nelsonian (as in, moderate Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson) or Breauxian (as in, moderate former Senator John Breaux of Lousiana).

Obama even got so upset about being classified as a moderate while gearing up for his 2004 Senate race that he went out of his way to fire off a letter to The Black Commentator disavowing any connection to the DLC (the *relatively* moderate Democratic Leadership Conference), typically the voice of sanity within the otherwise Deaniacal Democratic Party. In the letter, Obama came across as anything but moderate:

I'm proud of the fact that I stood up early and unequivocally in opposition to Bush's foreign policy (and was the only U.S. Senate candidate in Illinois to do so). That opposition hasn't changed, and I continue to make it a central part of each and every one of my political speeches. Likewise, I spend much of my time with audiences trying to educate them on the dangers of both the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, and the rest of John Ashcroft's assault on the Constitution.

Obama went on to describe in the letter how, in the preceding 3 months as state representative, he was responsible for "25 pieces of major progressive legislation."

Twenty-five pieces of major progressive legislation in three months!

Unadulterated Obama, entirely in his own words. Does that sound like the handiwork of a moderate? Not even close.

Obama, before becoming a Senator, enjoyed bragging-- very publicly-- about his liberal record, something moderates typically do not do. Take this ad the Obama campaign took out in the Windy City Times, Chicago's gay newspaper, boasting, among other things, about Obama's "100% Pro-Choice voting record" (.pdf):

Every candidate, Democrat or Republican, moves to the left or right for party primaries, then back to the center in the general election. That's how the game is played. But Obama's pandering to the left-wing of the Democratic Party was decidedly atypical, spanning his entire career as State Representative:

But, hasn't Obama moderated since his election?

Well, if voting against confirming Janice Rogers Brown, voting against giving John Bolton an up-or-down vote, voting against confirming Priscilla Owen, voting against confirming Alberto Gonzales, and voting against bankruptcy reform, all makes one "moderate," sure.

But Obama is not moderate. He wasn't a moderate before his 2004 election, nor has he become moderate since joining the Senate.

Indeed, Obama recently went out of his way to compare President Bush's vision for an Ownership Society to "Social Darwinism-- every man or woman for him or herself," in a commencement address at Knox College:

It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford—tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job—life isn’t fair. It let’s us say to the child who was born into poverty—pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we’re the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won’t be the chump who Donald Trump says: “You’re fired!”

This kind class warfare, so typical on the left, completely mangles the fundamental features of an Ownership Society, while ignoring America's historical exceptionalism, rooted in free enterprise.

Obama is no moderate. His Senate voting record, moving forward, will make his leftist credentials indisputable. His left-wing record, interestingly enough, will place Barack Obama on the inside track to win the Democratic nomination for President in 2012.

Posted by Will Franklin · 12 June 2005 09:33 PM

Comments

Posted by: Zsa Zsa at June 13, 2005 09:16 AM

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Posted by: Bob at June 17, 2005 04:23 PM