Poll: Obamateurism of the Week?

Not only does Obama weasel with words and misinterpret Churchill’s words and actions, Obama has little understanding of Abraham Lincoln.

In these two paragraphs of Cesar Conda at NRO’s “The Corner,” the writer pays tribute to Jack Kemp, who was an admirer of Lincoln.

Mwntored by Kemp, Conda reflects

Jack was best known for championing supply-side economics, which transformed the Republican Party from a minority party of austerity in the 1970s to the majority party of opportunity and growth it became under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and beyond. But Jack was also an indefatigable champion for expanding freedom and democratic capitalism (with small “d” as he used to say) across the globe, for empowering the working poor in America’s distressed urban and rural communities, and for broadening the Republican Party’s appeal to African-Americans, Hispanics and other minorities by bringing it back to the Party of Abraham Lincoln.

Jack Kemp was a great admirer of America’s 16th president. He had a bust of Abraham Lincoln that followed him from his Congressional office in the Rayburn Building to the Secretary’s office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to his very modest office at Kemp Partners in downtown Washington D.C. In his last syndicated column in February, Jack Kemp wrote a glowing tribute to Abraham Lincoln, in which he describes “Lincoln’s view of the ‘American ideal’ – that the principles enunciated in America’s Declaration of Independence are universal, and that freedom is not just for some people, but for all people, and not just for one time, but for all time.” Kemp further writes: “For Abraham Lincoln, true welfare meant not dependency, but well-being; not equality of reward, but equality of opportunity; not reliance on the state, but reliance on oneself and one’s family. He wrote, prophetically, The progress by which the poor, honest, industrious and resolute man raises himself, that he may work on this own account and hire somebody else … is the great principle for which this government was really formed.’” Kemp cites another quote from Lincoln, which provides some lessons for today: “I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. … I want every man to have the chance — and I believe a black man is entitled to it — in which he can better his condition — when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system.”

Obama needs to improve his comprehension skills, as well as his knowledge of history.

onlineanalyst on May 3, 2009 at 7:13 PM