Obama wants so badly to put on the ruby slippers and go home to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave..but he can’t (or more correctly – I hope he won’t).

evilcon555 on April 18, 2008 at 7:11 PM

I think Obama just wants to put on the rubes, but he can’t because of his recent slippers.

Neither credit middle Americans for transcending their own personal needs for what they believe to be the best policies for the nation as a whole.

The reason they don’t credit Americans with that is simple – they cannot conceive of doing it themselves! Give a Dem the choice between his own interests and his country, and his country will lose every time!

Projection doesn’t just happen in that little room at the back of the CinePlex, you know!

BrianA on April 19, 2008 at 12:11 AM

If Americans in the heartland aren’t thinking about 10 point policy points then why is he kvetching that the first half of the ABC debate didn’t deal with policy?

Moreover what is elitist about Obama in this video is his implicit statement that people don’t vote for their economic interests, i.e. they’re too stupid to know that the Republicans don’t have their economic interests at heart and that only Democrats can save them.

Brownstein makes a couple of references to the Dems’ dominance among middle class voters until approximately the 1960′s. Well, duh. The 60′s was when it began to be acceptable and even admirable to mock conventional values, to the point that they declared “God is dead”. And they didn’t think that would p**s us off?

We didn’t become “values voters” until they tried to take our values away.

He and his ilk fail to realize that we like making our own “pies”, that the number or size of those “pies” is an aspect that we prefer to have personal determination over, and that we prefer to distribute pieces of that “pie” as our own means and generosity decide.

In other words, we enjoy being adults and not wards of the State.

Elites, Liberal Elites (same difference, I know) control the government, media, and cultural/academic institutions. Of course they want higher taxes because they benefit from them. As do big businesses who use economy of scale to squeeze out profits while start-ups are crushed.

Thus, elites (who also populate the boardrooms and are Democratic) win by higher taxes. They can afford them, and the taxes pay for things they like: fancy new sports stadiums, money for cultural institutions, crushing of disruptive entrepreneurs (through high taxes), sinecures in government entities for relatives, and so on.

Think of elites as a “Landless Gentry” trying to extort estates out of tax revenues and you get the picture.

No wonder Kansas rejects it. They’ll never benefit from the tax money. Ever. It all goes to elites.

The conservative approach to economics and especially to less intrusive government is the knowledge that competitive markets work in mostly rational ways, while monopolies create massive inefficiencies and stunt development and growth. Government becomes the ultimate monopoly, backed with confiscatory powers that can and do work in capricious, irrational, and oppressive manners.

You one smart fella Ed.

I’ll quote it one more time, since Ed so eloquently summarizes what’s been knocking about in my brain all week. In short: how dare Obama, or any other politician, assume that we can be bought, or that there’s no value or belief more transcendant than the almighty dollar?

“The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property”

Karl Marx

He (Marx) forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man’s freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil.

Nichevo on April 18, 2008 at 6:46 PM

A point well-recognized by our own Founding Fathers in their time.

winemkr, you’re hereby awarded the “Comment of the day”. Thank you for your service, and thank you for thinking the way you do. And, you have nothing to apologize for about your writing.

Ed, this is my favorite part, one all still free Americans, and socialism-aspiring masses of the world should internalize, before it’s too late:

Neither Obama nor Frank could open their minds to comprehend that people hold values outside of their wallets, who see the trade between initial comfort and the loss of freedom as a foolish transaction.

RushBaby on April 18, 2008 at 7:21 PM

What you said RushBaby. We are not all “Country Club Republicans.”

Conservatives don’t believe in laissez-faire economics just because they hope to strike it rich as individuals in the market. Most of us understand that we face long odds in doing so, and most don’t even have that as a goal. The conservative approach to economics and especially to less intrusive government is the knowledge that competitive markets work in mostly rational ways, while monopolies create massive inefficiencies and stunt development and growth. Government becomes the ultimate monopoly, backed with confiscatory powers that can and do work in capricious, irrational, and oppressive manners.

Ed, I especially appreciate this paragraph, because it specifically teaches Conservatism, in this case, by contrasting it with Obama’s folly. It gives us something to be proud of rather than just responding with cascades of returned insults.

Obama clearly falls into the condescending category that believes all values spring from economics,…

A cornerstone of Marxist thought is exactly that man is nothing but homo economicus with no value not expressed in dollars or in service to the state. Darwin and aetheists have aided in the reduction of man to an accident of nature, just another animal.

Another cornerstone is because man is generally so useless, he needs guidance from the state to be useful and raised from his animal state. The operators of the state apparatus of course are savants like Barry O.

There was a recent essay about the role of Marx in Barry O’s apparent construct of the world which was more clinical in explaining how tightly Barry O is following the Marxist playbook of life. This should be no surprise at all as black theology is Marxism cloaked (feebly) in Christianity (“the godless inside the godly” it was said). Jeremiah Wright sells black theology and Barry O was in a forward pew for two decades.

He didn’t notice Wright saying anything radical because…Wright didn’t. Least not in Barry O’s version of the world. So he is truthful and a liar at the same time.

Should have copied that essay. The flub on capital gains tax rates was no accident and is of a piece with the rest of Barry O’s “thoughts”. No wonder he has been ducking the issues so hard, he would never have come this far if he hadn’t. Poor Michelle would have missed out on being “proud”, too. Sniff, oh, the sadness of it all…

winemkr on April 18, 2008 at 7:07 PM

Very pleasant diatribe. Enjoy your steak!

winemkr on April 18, 2008 at 7:07 PM

Hey, don’t apologize. You did just fine — and the thing about working harder and making less — you’re not alone.

(Glad you rescued your steak.)