WSJ EDITORIAL: OBAMA DEMONISES ANYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH HIM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324235104578242121666374116.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
President Obama likes to talk about civility in politics, but then he has a particular personal talent for attributing to his political opponents only base motives and beliefs they don’t come close to holding. Consult his Monday press conference for a classic of the genre.
Mr. Obama was asked an anodyne question at one point about reducing the deficit and the long-term accumulation of debt, and perhaps you’ve noticed that the deficit is $1 trillion a year and the debt is building rapidly toward 90% of GDP. Mr. Obama acted as if solving this problem would be a pleasant stroll through a dewy meadow, claiming that “if we’re trying to reduce the deficit, then we can shape a bipartisan plan to reduce the deficit. . . . There’s a recipe for getting that done.”
Good to know. And there are a few reasonable Republicans, Mr. Obama allowed. “But it seems as if what’s motivating and propelling at this point some of the House Republicans is more than simply deficit reduction.”
Here’s the rest in full: “They have a particular vision about what government should and should not do. So they are suspicious about government’s commitments, for example, to make sure that seniors have decent health care as they get older. They have suspicions about Social Security. They have suspicions about whether government should make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat, or whether we should be spending money on medical research. So they’ve got a particular view of what government should do and should be.”
The next time Mr. Obama holds a press conference, somebody should ask him to identify by name those who want to repeal Social Security, steal food from orphans and cancel science funding. We’d like to meet these Visigoths. Otherwise, if the fiscal negotiations are going nowhere, perhaps it is because the President simply won’t make an honest argument.
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