So. Name the last policy position that President Obama’s successfully sold to Americans.

Alternative title: Moe’s not really alarmed about tomorrow’s gun control press conference.

President Obama will unveil a sweeping set of gun-control proposals at midday Wednesday, including an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and limits on the number of bullets that ammunition clips can hold, according to sources familiar with the plans.

The announcement, which press secretary Jay Carney said is scheduled for about 11:45 a.m. at the White House, is also expected to include a slate of up to 19 executive actions that the Obama administration can take on its own to attempt to limit gun violence.

Don’t get me wrong: I understand that the guy won two Presidential elections.  But his ability to build a consensus and achieve a policy goal is not so much in question as it is practically cryptozoological*.  There’s a reason why Obama abruptly stopped achieving at the even the pathetically low level of Obamacare, once he stopped having Democratic control of Congress…

Moe Lane

*”But what about the tax hikes?!?” I hear some readers/lurkers cry.  Well, let’s just say that I don’t grade on a curve: when a politician starts in a position where all he has to do is nothing and he can watch a campaign promise fulfill itself, and yet somehow ends with a position where he’s given away 98% of the store and bound up his political opponents’ sucking chest wound in the process… well.  One more victory like that, and Obama is undone…

17 thoughts on “So. Name the last policy position that President Obama’s successfully sold to Americans.”

  1. If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer …
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    Guess, to Obama, everything looks like a citizen to be screwed via Executive Fiat (erm Order)…
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    I would point out, Moe, “Cash for Clunkers”…
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    Mew

    1. Obama great at giving stuff away for votes, not so good at convincing Americans to give up stuff such as guns and bullets. This press conference will be the usual sound and arrogance signifying nothing but of course Andrew Sullivan will call it the greatest speech in the history of great speeches. Speaking of which what would be the over/under on Lincoln references in Ezra Klein’s article. 75?

      1. Well .. yeah.
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        The question is, if he’s just mintin’ money, why not do a Federal “cash for guns” ?
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        Every cop shop in the U.S. gets a stack of forms, citizen fills out the form for every gun they drop off, get a refund check in 4-6 weeks…
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        Mew

  2. The most… charming… bit will be the kids there. Because a man who votes to let infants die from exposure is all about the kids.

  3. He didn’t sell America on health care reform.

    But he still got it. And he’ll probably get this too, because it’s for the children.

    1. Sorry, comment haste, repent in perpetuity.

      But I still think this will get rammed down our throats.

    1. we should give the man his due, he has not only defeated us many times, but he has us fighting on the wrong front. While we try to debate in the political realm, King Obama uses the indirect approach and wins with Hollywood theatrics, style not even needing substance.

      Hollyweird, the NEA, MSM, and our rapidly declining national intelligence have created a perfect storm of frivolousness, vapidity, and inanity. Obama and the far left know this, and they use our deformities to their own ends.

      1. *Please*. I’m a neoconservative. We broke Barack Obama on the wheel and turned him into a cheap, half-assed copy of George W Bush. Don’t tell me that he’s invulnerable.

        1. If it weren’t for his plans to gut the military, I would have to agree with you Moe. He certainly likes his drones.

          But why is he letting the French hang out to dry in Mali? Maybe he is just being coy, and the Paras are really backed up by a drone battalion.

        2. I agree that Obama sucks as a consensus maker. It might just be that he does not really care about other Democrats. I will not go so far as to say all he cares about is himself, because his hatred of America is real and it matters. He won’t pass all kinds of bills ala FDR, but he will bring America down a few pegs when all is said and done. Even if we win in 2016*, we all will pay for his eight years. imho.

          *not that I think we will

          1. Pat Buckman 2016.
            .
            Horsing around on domestic policy, like guns and money, distracts from his foreign policy blundering. It may be a strategy. Or it may represent his deeply felt white supremacist and innumerate values. I have no real certainty.
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            Cultivating discord might be a strategy for damaging the United States, in the long term, beyond what can be done by meddling in laws and institutions. One way to do this is to pursue, mainly for publicity’s sake, a series of policies tailored to seem plausible to one side and to have serious flaws when examined by the other side. The more people pay attention, the more they have emotional reactions, the more they would play into this sort of plan.
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            Obama makes a certain amount of sense if you assume he is some variety of Discordian, perhaps a Fundamentalist of the sort that gives the rest a bad name.
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            A counter-strategy might be to remember that while the Democratic Party may have always been Evil, it has also required a level of force to destroy that would destroy the Republic. Thus, there is a long history of tolerating some great evils from it for the sake of the Republic. That the Republic survived those may indicate that it can survive what is to come.
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            I don’t know. Maybe I am just being silly.

        3. I have my doubts as to outside forces having caused any actual change in Obama’s state.
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          His current policies are still points in the space that could have been predicted from his campaign in 2008.
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          He said many things, which could not have all been true.
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          I’d suggest that the stuff he did do, was what he was always going to do. Same with what he did not do. His military policy amounting to a buggered, soulless version of Bush’s is because he had Bush’s to use as a coloring book, not because of having any understanding of the merits of Bush’s position. (The Democrats and the peace movement hadn’t the staff or the real interest for their own plan, and Obama probably didn’t have the leadership to get much done with the government’s.)
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          I see other areas of consistent policy.
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          The Obama and Bush energy policies are and were very different things. For all that an MBA and a History degree are poor preparation for engineering and the hard sciences, Bush gave a significantly greater impression of having clues about the physical issues involved.

  5. He seems to be selling lawlessness to Americans (specific meaning there) as a policy very well. A steadfast, law-abiding citizen will become a criminal by an illegitimate process. Yes, he’s being very successful criminalizing conservatism.

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