Elsewhere I observed that Obama's sympathies lie with our nominally Islamic enemies. Someone countered as follows: I don't think his sympathies lie with the enemy. I think his problem is that he's a liberal and, as Robert Frost noted, a liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel. What I want to know is whether and why any other conservatives here believe Obama is ill at ease in taking his own side in a quarrel, bearing in mind the distinction between his own side and the side of the American people, a distinction which I daresay has never been more glaring WRT any President.
No I think he's be drinking the leftist koolaid for so long that reality no longer matters to him. If you stand reality on its head long enough you begin to think that's its normal position.
Because a President, ALL Presidents DO NOT have the luxury of their own private belief system.A President is Duty Bound to follow our Constitution and secure our citizenry,above all else.Which is no small task. Once that is successfully accomplished a President can pick and chose what golf club he prefers on whatever golf course he chooses. NOT Before !!
Since I wrote the apparently offending comment, let me clarify my statement. I was referring to Obama's side as his role as President. I wasn't referring to his personal views, although they seem to be more and more reflected in our foreign policy. You'll notice that Obama can never bring himself to just come out and criticize the enemy (even to calling them enemies) without balancing the scales and dredging up some real or imagined problem of the West.
If Obama comes out and criticizes the enem of the enemy, he's is actually in a trap. He risks alienating lots of Muslims. And two political opportunists will jump all over his behind. in shot he is basically in a kind of a catch 22. he if says nothing he gets berated. If he says something tough and harsh sounding he gets berated. Which is why I've come up with the phrase Presidential Derangement Syndrome. Because people are super hypersensitive to anything he says and does and will always get up upset at anything he does. It did happen with previous Presidents, but somehow it seems to be far worse with Obama than it ever has before.
Obama is basically afraid to take a stand on anything and this is due to the fact that he has no policy or goal he is trying to reach. He is 100% purely reactionary and is content to let the world march on without trying to influence our position in any way. There are two types of presidents, those that focus on domestic policy and those that focus on foreign policy. Most presidents focus on foreign policy because that is where most of their policy lies but Obama really wants nothing to do with that area of his job, he wants to focus on wealth redistribution, taxing the wealthy, creating his large government programs and on and on.
I don't know why only President Obama has ever been in this sort of trap. FDR didn't equivocate on the Germans or Japanese, or Reagan with the Soviet Union.
The problem being that in his role as President he has no business speaking for himself, because he's supposed to speak for the American people; and if he has a problem taking America's side in a quarrel, we're right back where we started. I also notice that while he may not call American conservatives his enemies outright, he has no problem siding against them in a quarrel. Don't you?
I don't think it's any more than previous presidents. I think it's just things like Facebook, Twitter and forums that expose people to the opinions of others as never seen before in history. If it's worse, it's only because the echo chamber is larger now.
As has been made clear in another thread, The left hates the Tea Party more than they hate ISIS. And that includes the President. He wouldn't see any moral equivalence between the Tea Party and OWS.
Then how the hell does it make any sense to say he can't take his own side in a quarrel with the Tea Party?
It comes from you, since you're the one who said he can't take his own side in a quarrel. If that's the case, how the hell can he take his own side in a quarrel with the Tea Party?
The man actually thinks and talks most of the time like a law professor. They tend towards careful language use, toward a mind that compartmentalizes different issues and they like an analytic approach to problems seeing all sides and POV. Its only in partisan mode, that he loses that approach. They are so very careful not to let emotion run the show, not to get carried away, that they can come across as Hamlet crossed with Prof Kingsfield.
The guy was a damn community organizer, he is in so far in over his head it's pathetic, he's a complete embarrassment to the office and the country, end of story.
No, you're just unwilling to own the implications of your own assertion. The problem being that he's never out of partisan mode; and that professorial demeanor serves no greater purpose than to provide cover, at least in the eyes of the credulous, for his treasonous designs.
Obama is not a liberal. He's a right of center politician. The ACA is a market-based solution to the insurance problem in this country. It's a plan whose core came from the right wing heritage foundation and was enacted by republican Mitt Romney in MA. Cap and trade pollution legislation is a republican idea endorsed by Obama. Continuation of Bush's tax cuts by Obama is a right wing push and on and on. Those characterizing the president as liberal, socialist or such are ignoring the facts and regurgitating pabulum fed to them by their betters.
When 0bama is giving a speech to be critical of corporations and Republicans for things that upset him, then 0bama is animated, loud, scowling and full of vigor. 0bama pulls no punches when going after his political enemies, but when he is giving a speech on ISIS... he looks bored, annoyed and just reading the words on the prompter. If ISIL were TEA party folks promoting voter IDs, a corporation cutting employee hours over the ACA, or Republicans trying to force federal budget cuts.... then we'd see a pissed off president taking it to the enemy, and pulling no punches. Why 0bama will not take it to the Islamofascists? I have no clue.
Well I've always viewed Obama as coming from a typical faculty lounge left worldview that is ridiculously off base and has no real connection to the real world. Combine that with a total misunderstanding of human nature and you have the current mishmash you see now. It's been obvious to me, ever since the "apology tour" that Obama has viewed the US as a "bad" country that he wants to reform to make a "good" country. Then the world will love us, because he totally understands why the world hated the US before he came on the scene. What he can't understand is why the whole world hates the US after he came on the scene. I think he literally cannot compute an enemy like ISIS that burns people alive on video, and has reinstituted the slave trade. He can't seem to believe his lying eyes on that, so he has no answers. Therefore he goes back to his old default, moral equivalence. Now when it comes to domestic enemies, he has no problem with thinking of them as actual enemies, unlike the international kind. No moral equivalence there between the Tea Party and OWS. One side is unambiguously good, the other, unadulterated pure evil. That's the enemy he really wants to fight, not third world "insurgents" that he sympathizes with.
