The Redhunter

As many are starting to point out, he's united us in OPPOSITION to his agenda. Tea Party!

Tom, those are extremely good points. Thx for your research. If I find the time, I will use them with your permission on our blog.

Sanke Hunter sez,

Divisive? Well, not exactly. Barry Obama is a slick Chicago-style politician, a fake 'Trinity Church Christian, a'la Rev. Jeremiah Wright', a Lover of "Muslim Culture", and he says "I am one of them" on our 10-minute U-Tube!

Seven short months to the mid-term elections; it signals the end of his super-majority rule. - reb
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Tom, et al.

The fascination of argument is that two rational people can consider identical facts and reach opposite conclusions.

Initially, I am uncertain whether Mr. Obama is the most divisive president ever. In all fairness, that title likely belongs to Mr. Lincoln. In my lifetime, I would award that title to our previous president, although I would also refrain from judging any president until his tenure is over and I am reminded that after 9/11 Mr. Bush's approval rating was what? 80%?

So far as the most recent health care legislation is concerned, my analysis is that it failed to gain bipartisan support for one very simple reasons. Absent an event on the proportion of 9/11, the GOP has decided to oppose the President in everything as a strategy to gain seats in Congress. History teaches us that the GOP will gain seats in the mid term election. Will the GOP retake either the House or Senate? If the economy improves, I suspect not but I would not bet the south 40 on that, much less the farm.

The GOP's fundamental problem is that it lacks vision and of late has proven itself completely unable to govern.

Other than Tom, w/o doing any research, can anyone tell me, off the top of their head, what solutions the GOP proposes? Other than tax cuts for everyone, particularly the rich?

Meanwhile, Ms. Wells, I feel compelled to advise you that all of my family, and most of my friends and acquaintances view people who identify themselves as Tea Partiers as hysterical
nut jobs. Indeed, other than being united against the President and the Democrats, what are Tea Partiers for? Lay some tea party proposals on me and I will happy to show you how silly they are. Politically, anyone is going to have some very real problems if their icon is Glenn Beck.

Please understand that in my opinion, tea partiers are not very important b/c these types were never voting Democratic.

As for the Republicans many people have an attention span that is longer than the period between television commercials.

The financial mess in which we still find ourselves occurred on George W. Bush's watch. Two wars, both "off the books," and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is not an inspiring record. My response to the hysterics out there who believe that the president is a socialist or the second coming of Adolph Hitler is: "Read the history of our republic between 2000 and 2008 and get a grip."

Whereas everyone is entitled to their opinion if you put a bumper sticker on your pick up's back window, such as the one I saw yesterday, that had a picture of Mr. Obama and that stated: "Hitler gave great speeches too" you had better be able to articulate a cogent argument as to how such a sentiment has any foundation in evidence based reality.

Tom, I am hoping you are working on an analysis of the recent election in Iraq as I am interested in what your take is.

Regards,

TLGK

Agree with TLGK that Lincoln was most divisive, by a measurable objective standard.

I see that Maliki is planning on contesting the election results by appealing to the courts - proving that Iraqis truly can learn from America how to run a democracy.

Thank you everyone for stopping by.

Loop, I haven't gotten around to the recent election in Iraq though now that you mention it I may hop over to the ISW site and see what Kim Kagan has to say. Too busy getting ready for a mission trip to Guatemala, about which more later.

What I said in the post was

"This makes Barack Obama the most divisive president in modern history"

...making the title obvious hyperbole to get your attention. Clearly I wanted to eliminate the period up to and including the Civil War. That you and Mylne had to go back to Lincoln to find someone is in itself revealing.

Loop - the idea that we oppose Obama simply to win seats is at best silly. It rests on the notion that either A) GOP leaders have some magical hold over all of their members, and/or B) we function like some Borg creature whereby we all march in lockstep after taking our orders from Rush Limbaugh. Besides the obvious absurdity of such thoughts, I'm pretty involved in my local GOP and the idea that we all march in lockstep is... laughable.

More, your proposition denies the notion that we could actually be opposed to Obama on philosophical grounds, and that our opposition must be political.

I find this quite revealing. Progressives (liberals, choose your term, I don't want to get tied down in debating terminology) in general, I've found cannot seem to imagine that anyone can actually believe differently than they do. "You are against the welfare state? Impossible! You oppose universal government health insurance coverage? Unbelievable! You don't think that the Constitution is a living document? Unreal! You don't accept global warming? Denier! You don't aceept a woman's right to choose? Neanderthal! " Progressives have it in their heads that certain issues are "settled" and thus cannot imagine someone exists who thinks otherwise.

Conservatives accept that liberals in general and Obama in particular have quite different notions about the role of government and it's relationship to the individual. I, we, accept that we have different ideas about the Constitution and what it means. I grant all this to Obama. I spend time learning about the history of the progressive movement (their term) and why they/you believe what you do.

Sure, at times each side will do something strictly for political gain. Of course. But they rarely do it on the big things, and when they do they're rarely unified about it.

So we on the right are opposed to the stimulus, cap and trade, and Obamacare because they massively violate our notions of what government is all about.

Finally, I see that you dredge up the old saw about "well Bush did x, y, and z wrong...." Yes I know, and virtually all conservative very much opposed most of the domestic Bush agenda, and we said so loudly at the time. That Obama is making a bad situation worse is no excuse. Obama and liberals cannot say "we inherited a bad situation so it's ok for us to make it worse." Besides, all presidents inherit what they think is a bad situation, so such complaints elicit not much more than a yawn from me. At least what Carter and Bush did was reversible (of course you know I support Iraq and Afghanistan). As far as I am concerned Obama is the worst president we've had in the post-civil war era. The damage he is doing to our country is tremendous, and he's trying to make it permanent.

Divisive? Tom, Obama was driven to it by obstructionist republicans hell bent on maintaining the status quo of corporate ownership of government. A few democrats of the same mindset joined them.

Find me 10 republicans in Congress that would repeal Medicare, Social Security or the Voting Rights Act now.

Positive change doesn't come easily. No doubt there were right leaning thinkers in Roosevelts day who said he was the worst President ever.

Since we have not had a true leader in this country for such a long time, most people have no concept of what a good leader is. A president is supposed to be a leader of ALL Americans not just some core group, or certain factions of society.

What is even worse is that obama has perfected the art of pitting one group against another and publicly demonizing certain other Americans. This is NOT presidential and certainly NOT a demonstration of leadership in any form I am aware of. Clinton did this as well but not to the extent that obama does.

Liberalism is a mental disorder, just as is alcoholism. Without remedial help alcoholics will eventually self destruct. They are clueless as to how they affect the lives of those around them because they are incapable of managing their own disease. Narcissism and Arrogance the usual symptoms of liberalism as self-loathing usually is to an alcoholic.

Thank you for stopping by, Patriot. No, liberalism is not a mental disorder. Let's disagree with them without saying that sort of thing. Otherwise, I think we're pretty much in agreement.