May 30, 2009
First there was “The Decider.” Then came Big Man Obama.
“The Decider” is the nickname George Bush gave his all-powerful self.
To go by the dictionary, and “within the context of political science, big man, big man syndrome, or bigmanism refers to corrupt and autocratic rule of countries by a single person.”
“The Decider” habitually sidestepped the chain of command in the military and winked at the Constitutional scheme. Under The Decider’s dictatorship, matters that ought to have been the business of the people or their representatives were routinely consigned to the executive branch.
Big Man Obama is already giving Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd palpitations. Byrd, bless him, is “a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House.” According to Politico.com, this old Southern gentleman, after whom Republicans are always chasing for his past indiscretions, warned about Obama’s executive-branch power grab.
Chief Obama has decided to create a number of new White-House fiefdoms: one on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. “Byrd said such positions “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances.’”
Bush’s back-and-forth with Iraqi officials, to cite an example, often involved sidestepping the Senate’s “advise-and-consent” powers, and negotiating matters as “executive agreements.”
Like The Decider before it, the current “White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.””
We”ve been “spared” warning of Strongman Obama’s Orwellian overreach because a Big Man has big guns: the menagerie of morons that is the American media.
The Chief is working in the same tradition as The Decider, only with even less scrutiny and far more impunity.
George Will pales by comparison to Sen. Byrd. Still, after detailing the flouting of contracts, the use of TARP as a slush fund, and the bullying of business, Will concluded this about the Obama administration’s “central activity”the political allocation of wealth and opportunity”:
“The … administration’s agenda of … political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of “economic planning” and “social justice” … is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption. The Obama administration is … careless regarding constitutional values and is acquiring a tincture of lawlessness,” Will warned.
Will waffles a lot about “constitutional values.” I don”t like it one bit”especially since Obama does it too. In support of federal appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s pick to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, the White House issued some Talking Points.
Emphasized twice therein is the paramountcy of selecting “someone who will uphold””wait for this””the … Constitutional values on which this nation was founded.”
Now, the president uses words cautiously and cleverly. He means what he says when he talks of “upholding constitutional values,” as opposed to upholding the Constitution! And it is to the spirit of the law, as he divines it, and not the letter of the law, that the president is committed.
For their part, the liberal media’s judicial jiu-jitsu has been unconscionable. Are the legal writings and judicial rulings of Judge Sotomayor being scrutinized? Not on your life. Right away, the usual moron menagerie began to construct a meta-argument invalidating the GOP’s yet-to-be-made case against Sotomayor, if you get my drift.
An argument against an argument!
From NBC News” Andrea Mitchell to the lowliest Democratic strategist: all are advising viewers, first, that to oppose Sotomayor is to risk Hispanic ire. And second, that in order to dodge death by demographics, Republicans must continue to court Latinos slavishly.
For example, making too much of Sotomayor’s Wise Latina Woman cretinous comment is unwise for Republicans, the talking twits tell us. Judge Sotomayor suggested in 2001, “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
The consensus among the commentariat is that this is no time for the GOP to come to the defense of paleface: white judges or white firefighters. (Sotomayor washed her hands of the white, New Haven firefighters, and upheld racial discrimination against them.) The so-called incontrovertible truth at which the Obama media minions are getting is this:
The GOP’s powerbase hangs on Hispanics.
Dogged demographer Steve Sailer has been dispelling this manufactured dogma convincingly for close to a decade:
“Hispanics are no more socially conservative than blacks,” who identify with Democrats. The Hispanic electorate cares primarily “about bread and butter issues,” and most have figured out on “which side their bread is buttered,” says Sailer.
“Among Latinos 55 and up, the Democrats lead 64 percent to 17 percent.” As for Hispanic Republicans, they “aren’t terribly Republican. On the question of more taxing and spending, Hispanic Republicans are slightly more liberal than white Democrats.”
Sen. John McCain, who would wrestle a crocodile for any Hispanic, legal or illegal, received just 31 percent to Obama’s 67 percent of the national Hispanic vote.
The GOP needs Hispanics to sustain a worthwhile political life like an anaerobic organism needs oxygen.
Come to think of it, a GOP that accommodates the demands of this demographic is better off dead.
Expect Republicans to be doing an energetic “diversity” trot. The dance will be designed to appease Hispanics and dilute any substantive critique of Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy.
Mission accomplished.
