ABC News’ Jonathan Karl had an interesting exchange with Jay Carney, Monday during the daily press briefing.
Carney: “Nobody’s been more outraged by the reported conduct than the president of the United States”, Carney asserted, (as he likes to do.) No one ever cares as much, works as hard, is more dedicated, more outraged, or more whatever than this president. He’s the POTUS with the MOSTUS.
Karl: “Jay, with all due respect, the outrage from the president came, last week….”
Carney: (interrupting) “his outrage came within hours of the release of the report”...(I’m so impressed!)
Karl:” But, but, but what I’m saying is that there were public reports that this was going on for almost a year before the presidential election. How is it that no one in the White House has a responsibility even before the IG report to say, ‘hey! By the way, this kind of activity shouldn’t be going on…let’s make sure, and take steps to get this to stop?’”
Carney: (bored, resigned tone): “Again, I refer you to the IG, who investigated this matter, the treasury Dept and others who investigated this matter.”
And then he launched into a long dissertation about the IG report, which I’m not going to bother to transcribe, because it was stupid, (and irrelevant.)
(At this point, I would have asked, “HEY DOES THE PRESIDENT NOT HAVE ACCESS TO TV, RADIO, NEWSPAPER, INTERNET? THE NEW YORK TIMES REPORTED ON THE PROBLEM AT LEAST A COUPLE OF TIMES. YOU HAD TO BE LIVING UNDER A ROCK NOT TO HAVE KNOWN THAT THIS WAS GOING ON. A FAIR AND IMPARTIAL LEADER WOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING TO STOP IT. GEE, MAYBE YOU’RE JUST GIVING US THE RUN AROUND, HERE, BECAUSE THE PRESIDENT DID KNOW, AND WAS IN FACT ORCHESTRATING IT.”
Karl: ”You’re missing the point of the question – public reports almost a year before the election… Is there any responsibility on the part of the administration of saying, “hey IRS, we don’t treat groups differently based on politics.”
Carney: “It is absolutely our view, (crosstalk) but you’re saying accusations, and in response to these accusations there was an IG audit launched. Uh – that was appropriate and the findings are that which we now know. And the president’s response to those findings could not be more clear (finger comes out signalling a huge whopper is ahead) We need to hold people accountable and we have to make sure that this activity doesn’t happen again because it’s very important that the American people believe that the IRS applies our tax laws fairly and neutrally.”
A poll must have told him that, because I doubt anyone in this Regime could have figured that one out on his own.
So what’s the takeaway, here? Well, apparently, before the President is allowed to say anything about accusations, he must wait until there’s a full investigation, and a report comes out (after an election, of course.) Because to do otherwise would just be irresponsible, or something.
But this President has used the bully pulpit like a bully for years. On any number of controversial issues, he was happy to share his strong opinions. Even non-political issues like the professor who was accosted by police when it looked like he might be breaking into a house, (it was his own) and was arrested for behaving belligerently, Obama was happy to share his opinion that “the police acted stupidly,” even before he knew all of the details about the case. When George Zimmerman shot Travon Martin, (allegedly in self defense,) Obama was happy to share his opinion on the case before it was investigated or litigated. Travon looked just like Obama’s son, if he had one, in case you don’t know. When Sandra Fluke was insulted by Rush Limbaugh, the otherwise reticent President jumped right in there! He called Fluke and said, “there there, now”, and then he weaponized her to beat all pro-life Republicans over the head for the rest of the year. (Big coincidence. Pro-life groups were some of the IRS’s targets, too.)
But most of all, Obama constantly voiced his opinions on divisive issues that pitted groups of Americans against each other. Almost like it was a political tactic, or something,.
By April of 2011, one reporter for CNBC wrote:
Will someone please rein in our relentlessly hectoring President? Barrack Hussein Obama has taken his gift for inspiration share his gift for inspirational oratory—one of the traits that got him elected—and turned it into something darker and more insidious.
Bam is a bully. Bad enough that he bashes Wall Street, but this President has gone farther than any in modern history in the wrong kind of “bully” back into what Teddy Roosevelt had called the bully pulpit.
Obama’s latest broadside came over the weekend, when he vehemently criticized the state of Arizona and its (Republican) governor for passing a tough new law on illegal immigration.
The President called the measure “misguided” and all but labeled it un-American. He even ordered the Department of Justice, before the ink on this bill-signing has even dried, to examine the civil-rights “implications” of the new law. Seems like the courts and rights groups could handle that once any problem actually emerges.
Can you remember any other modern President, wagging a finger from on high, so directly and bitterly criticizing a new law passed by any state?
It’s funny how Obama’s “bully pulpit” has become the new normal, and people now pretty much expect him to pit Americans against each other.
Obama’s visceral dislike of the tea party was noted by Jake Tapper at ABC in May of 2010.
Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.
In Jonathan Alter’s “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” President Obama is quoted in an interview saying that the unanimous vote of House Republicans vote against the stimulus bills “set the tenor for the whole year … That helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.”
Tea Party activists loath the term “tea baggers,” which has emerged in liberal media outlets and elsewhere as a method of mocking the activists and their concerns.
To those of us who were paying attention during the 2008 election, this behavior was wholly expected of Obama. In May of 2011, I wrote, Obama Still Poised To Silence Critics.
Very early in Obama’s presidency, on February 19, 2009 to be exact, I wrote a post about how this thin skinned president was poised to silence critics of his regime.
We already knew about Obama’s history of intimidation, and character assassination. We knew how he had tried to destroy his political enemies – at least regular readers of this site know, because I covered it while it was happening, here, and here, and here. While projecting an outward appearance of near messianic magnanimity, his underlings, lawyers, and political allies were always working feverishly to steamroll over critics, (and plaintiffs).
Mark Hyman of The American Spectator wrote about Obama’s Chicago brand of hardball politics, recently in an article entitled, Obama’s Enemies List. As many of us feared, the “Chicago way” has found a home in The White House:
In only his third full day as the 44th president Obama personally went on the offensive against a media personality. On January 23rd, Obama warned Congressional Republicans against listening to Rush Limbaugh. The man who offered to sit down with Holocaust denier and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without any preconditions whatsoever views an American radio talk show host as a dangerous threat.
In precedent-setting action, Obama moved his director of political affairs, a highly partisan post, from the Old Executive Office Building into the West Wing. Political operative Patrick Gaspard was given White House access not experienced by his predecessors. Obama official Shauna Daly, a non-lawyer and career opposition researcher described as a “partisan dirt-digger,” was assigned to the White House counsel office. The move signals not only a new low in partisan activities, but suggests the office assignment may be intended to hide Daly’s political activities under the guise of the counsel’s attorney-client privileges.
Fast forward over two years later, and nobody even bats an eye at White House enemies lists, lies, threats, intimidation, bullying, corruption, and opposition research of anyone who looks like a threat to His Highness.
This is the new normal.
Well, the new normal has come up and bit Obama on the a$$. People are sick of the lies. They’re not fooling anyone, anymore, and what do you know? The media has been burned , now, so they’re not in the mood to play pattycake with the Regime anymore. For five years now, they were happy to give Obama a pass. But now, finally, as I’ve previously noted, I’m sensing a change in their reporting which is becoming increasingly unfriendly to their former God King. I don’t want a MSM on any one person or group’s side. I want them on the side of all Americans and on the side of the truth. I suspect an honest search for the truth could lead to a very bumpy ride for Obama in the coming weeks and months.. With an MSM that has an allegiance to the truth and not some fictional hero President (which Obama never was), the Regime is in big trouble.
