O No: After the Man Crush

Looks like some ObamaCons are suffering post Big O letdown...

Peter Robinson, in Forbes, observes how the ecstasy has turned to agony for three famous ObamaCons: David Gergen, Christopher Buckley, and David Brooks. They found themselves swept up in Obamania, enraptured by the idea of a moderate philosopher king to salve the nation's latigo wounds, left bleeding by the reckless Cowboy Bush.

Robinson chalks it up to "the cluelessness of the elites."

Contrast Buckley, Gergen and Brooks with, let us say, Rush Limbaugh, whose appearance at any chic cocktail party would cause the hostess to faint dead away, or with Thomas Sowell, who occupies probably the most unfashionable position in the country, that of a black conservative.

Limbaugh and Sowell both got Obama right from the very get-go. "Just what evidence do you have," Sowell replied when I asked, shortly before the election, whether he considered Obama a centrist, "that he's anything but a hard-left ideologue?"

The elite journalists, I repeat, got Obama wrong. The troglodytes got him right. As our national drama continues to unfold, bear that in mind.

Todd Zywicki at Volokh Conspiracy thinks the Declasse' Sarah Palin repulsed these well-manicured metrosexuals, driving them into the arms of Mr. Obama.

I don't know that I would agree with Peter that the main problem here is the cluelessnes of the elite, although that is at least part of it. ... the polite establishment position was to distance oneself from the yahoos in the Republican Party in favor of the urbane Obama (although I'm not quite sure how Joe Biden fits in here).

Whatever the motivation, the desire of many to believe that Obama was a moderate was really just a triumph of wishful thinking and a desire to believe that was true, rather than any actual facts.

Those foolish elites. First Bernie Madoff and now this. Financially and politically fleeced. Even a hayseed like me knows that if it walks like a liberal, and quacks like a liberal, and most importantly, votes like a liberal…

http://volokh.com/posts/1236368924.shtml
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/05/buckley-gergen-brooks-opinions-columnists-obama-liberal.html

After the Man Crush: O Stands for Oh No

Pity the poor ObamaCon...

Were these moderates and self-described conservatives for Obama really so naive to believe he'd still love them come morning?

Stuart Taylor, a spurned centrist, laments President Obama's hard left turn.

Having praised President Obama's job performance in two recent columns, it is with regret that I now worry that he may be deepening what looks more and more like a depression and may engineer so much spending, debt, and government control of the economy as to leave most Americans permanently less prosperous and less free.

With little in the way of offsetting savings likely to materialize, the Obama agenda would probably generate trillion-dollar deficits with no end in sight, or send middle-class taxes soaring to record levels, or both.

All this from a man who told the nation last week that he doesn't "believe in bigger government" and who promised tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans.

The numbers don't add up -- and still won't if and when, as seems almost certain, Obama ratchets up his so-far-fairly-modest new taxes on the top 2 percent. "A tax policy that confiscated 100 percent of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue," according to a February 27 editorial in The Wall Street Journal. "That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable 'dime' of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion."

Veteran politician watchers have forgotten the #1 rule: Ignore what they say and look at their record. There was nothing in Illinois State Senator or US Senator Obama's record that even hinted at either moderation or bipartisanship.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090307_2566.php