Obama on liberal tax cuts critics: Some of these people are “confused”

Good lord. Is The One starting to direct some of the same condescending nonsense he aimed at voters during the campaign back at … his own base? This sounds a bit like his now infamous stump speech about people not thinking clearly in preferring the GOP.

“I know that there’s some folks who are angry about it,” he said. “They are confused about the extensions on the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, and there are policy and political objections. Some people are saying, ‘Well, did we fight hard enough for our position? Did we position ourselves properly on this?’”

The president said the bottom line is the votes weren’t there.

“We put up the best and smartest fight that we could under the circumstances. That means without 60 votes in the Senate,” the president said, “not a single Republican would support our position in the Senate, and as a consequence we could not get the 60 vote we needed to overcome their filibuster.”

Well, according to lefties, the “best and smartest fight” would have been to let the cuts expire and then dare the new Republican House to hold out for across-the-board cuts while middle-class voters howled about their rates going up. In fact, watch the clip below and you’ll see that Obama’s counting on a version of that strategy to boost him in 2012. We are indeed going to have this debate again, and I can’t wait to hear him explain how he’s going to get a middle-class-only cut through a still-Republican House and an even more Republican Senate come 2013. Assuming he’s still in the White House at the time, that is.

Exit question via Jay Cost: Was it liberals’ own insane demonization of American conservatives that made Obama’s tax cut “betrayal” possible in the first place? Quote: “Liberals are understandably grinding their teeth right now over Obama’s tax cut deal. They are angry that he is not as liberal as they thought he was, or at least that he is not as willing to fight for his liberal beliefs as they would like. But when push comes to shove, they will be there full tilt for the president because they will detest whomever the Republicans nominate. One cannot win the presidential nomination in the conservative-dominated Republican Party without thoroughly antagonizing American liberals. Look, for instance, at how the liberals came to hate John McCain, who was much more conciliatory than whomever the Grand Old Party will nominate in 2012. All of the well-known Republican candidates (Huckabee, Romney, Palin) already bother the liberals, and if a currently lesser-known candidate wins the nomination, the left will come to despise him or her with all the intensity they can muster.” Yep. No matter how far towards the center he goes, Obama can count on total enthusiastic support from the left once the next Republican Satan rises.

• Chuck Todd: The Obama administration is trying to “criminalize journalism”
• Report: DOJ seized multiple White House, Fox News records in Rosen ‘investigation’
• Quotes of the day

Blowback