It’s not the first time, either. Back in November of 2009, Perry told a Republican group in Texas that the Obama administration was “hell bent on taking America towards a socialist country.”
In a recent interview with TIME, he did it, again:
Now that you’ve been in the race for while, do you feel pressure to temper some of your rhetoric, like calling the Obama administration socialist?
No, I still believe they are socialist. Their policies prove that almost daily. Look, when all the answers emanate from Washington D.C., one size fits all, whether it’s education policy or whether it’s healthcare policy, that is, on its face, socialism.
The NY Times helpfully points out what Republican “rivals” think:
This year, as he faces charges from his rivals for the Republican nomination that his positions are too extreme to win the general election, Mr. Perry said he will not change the way he speaks to appeal to the nation as a whole.
Of course, Republican rivals always say their opponents are “too extreme”. I daresay the electorate has finally found out what happens when they listen to what Republican rivals say, and now they’re suffering from “extreme” voters’ remorse because of it.
Of course, Perry is absolutely correct. Obama is a Socialist, and so is the Democrat left flank in Congress. There’s nothing “extreme” about stating the obvious. Although the left will never openly admit what they are, (they can only achieve their goals through stealth), it should be common knowledge, by now. It would have been nice if people had heeded the warnings of conservative bloggers waving red flags (no pun intended) in 2008. But nobody outside of the conservative blogosphere seemed to be listening, including Republican campaign staffs.
Dr. John Drew, who knew Marxist, Obama, back when he was going to Occidental College, recounts his frustration in trying to warn the public about Obama back in 2008:
The Obama I knew was nothing like the lifelong pragmatic centrist that he was pretending to be in the 2008 presidential campaign. When I talked politics with the young Obama, he expressed a profound commitment to bringing about a socialist economic system in the U.S. — completely divorced from the profit motive — which would occur, in his lifetime, through a potentially violent, Communist-style revolution. In this context, I saw my report on young Obama as a key piece of evidence suggesting a profound continuity in his belief system.
Although I was surprised by Barack Obama’s insistence on his mainstream ideological credentials, I was shocked that my attempts to spread the news about young Obama’s Marxism failed to gain any media traction with reporters, activists, or campaign staffs during the 2008 presidential campaign.
Once I saw the significance of my face-to-face observations on the young Obama, I went out of my way to get my story on record with the Orange County Register. I tried to contact, among others, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, the folks behind the Swiftboat ads, and the McCain campaign.
I thought I would get a phone call back from Fox News — someone, somewhere — and I still do not understand why no one seemed to catch on to the urgency of the situation. I understand that I did not have audio tape of young Obama. I did not have any photos or home movies. Nevertheless, I was extremely active in the leftist politics and counter-cultural milieu of Occidental College in the 1970s.
***
What shocked me about my experience in the summer of 2008 is that I thought my experience as a Williams College political science professor, my small business owner status, and my visibility in the Orange County community would allow my message to immediately go to the very top of the McCain campaign. I thought my story would be welcomed by Fox News.
Since then, things have slowly gotten better. My story on the young Marxist Obama has appeared in Michael Savage’s Trickle-Up Poverty, Paul Kengor’s Dupes, Stanley Kurtz’s Radical-In-Chief, and Jack Cashill’s Deconstructing Obama.
Nevertheless, I think there is something broken in our media and campaign system. I do not think most independents or conservatives understand, or fully appreciate, the tremendous advantages the left derives from having the mainstream media serve as the fully paid, completely sympathetic, Dan Rather-level opposition research team of the Democratic Party. It is a system that methodically ignores damaging information about flawed candidates like Sen. John Edwards and Rep. Anthony Weiner, while elevating minor errors among Republicans to the status of Watergate investigations.
Believe me, those of us who were blogging in 2008 understand the dilemma, well. What we always knew was a problem, before, came sharply into focus, when story after damaging story on Obama was routinely ignored by the media. Not helpful was a clueless public that could have demanded better coverage, but were satisfied with the “hope and change” pablum they were being fed.
Dr. Drew has has a prescription for Republicans in the next go-around:
If Republicans are going to win in 2012, I think they need to make some changes so that they are more friendly to the whistle-blowers bringing them bad news about the Obama administration. Personally, I would like to see Republicans create new ways to collect negative news stories on liberals by 1) including web pages requesting opposition research from leakers; 2) establishing guidelines for leakers that help them give campaign decision-makers the confidence to pursue appropriate leads; and 3) instituting feedback mechanisms so leakers have some minimal assurance that they have been heard by top campaign managers and that their information has been discarded for technical or strategic reasons and not simply because it was overlooked by a careless staff member.
I’m not sure, but I think with the help of Twitter, conservatives are doing a better job getting their voices heard. When The Obama Campaign launched its noxious “snitch on conservatives” website, “Attack Watch”, it was impossible for the MSM to ignore the massive blow-back, most of it happening on Twitter. Now, there’s a death watch for Attack Watch.
But if it survives, Republicans need to have a serious counterpart. There is already an Attack Watch Watch, but it seems to be mostly about mocking Attack Watch and selling anti-Attack Watch merchandize. Worthy endeavors, certainly. But there needs to be a serious response to Obama’s agitprop.
In 2008, we could have used a counterpart to Obama’s “Fight the Smears” hogwash, too. Instead, various blogs handled the caseloads of b.s. piecemeal. One stop shopping is the way to go. I’d like to see a website that does nothing but offers serious rebuttals to Attack Watch’s propaganda. For instance, their attack on Rick Perry for saying that Obama’s created 0 jobs.
“We say pants on fire,” reports Politifact.com. The site refers to four independent analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and three private assessments of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to determine that anywhere between 1.3 million and 3.6 million jobs were created or saved by the stimulus—“but certainly more than zero.”
Operative words, “or saved”. Because Perry didn’t say anything about “saved”. He said, “created”: President Obama “had $800 billion worth of stimulus” and “created zero jobs.”
He has, in fact, lost a net of 3.5 million jobs since he became President. Perry was wrong because Obama has created less than 0 jobs.
The lowest number of jobs per the establishment data over the past 32 months occurred in January of 2010 when the BLS reported non-farm employment of 129.5 million. When one compares that month to the August 2011 report a gain of 1.6 million jobs is recorded. So by pulling out of the 32 months he has been in office only those months (19) beneficial to him, Barack Obama can claim he has created nearly 2 million jobs; never mind that a net of 3.5 million jobs have been lost since he became President.
On that basis any President can make himself appear to be a success as a job creator as at some point in a four year term jobs growth will occur just by the natural growth in population and business cycles. As no President before him has been so devious, Obama has taken deception to a new level by this and his many ongoing attempts to fool the American people for political gain.
Lee Doren also corrects the “jobs created or saved” deception, here.
We need a website that fact checks Obama’s “fact checks”.
Another thing that’s changed since 2008 is the MSM, like most of America has fallen out of love with “The Light-bringer”. I’m seeing more and more stories appearing that don’t help his highness. CBS has done a great job covering Fast and Furious, and too many news outlets to count are covering the Solyndra scandal. A new crony capitalism scandal, LightSquared, is being scrutinized by The Washington Post, among others.
Now there’s talk that Dem. party elders may take Obama aside, and strongly suggest that he do the right thing, (quit.)
Andrew Breitbart wrote on Tuesday that the Democrat rank and file are finally awakening to the fact that their party has been hijacked.
I predict a tectonic shift among American Jews and within the Democratic Party if Obama doesn’t quietly retire. All the spinning in the world can’t spin away the trend of Scott Brown, the Tea Party victory of November 2010, and now the Turner earthquake.
Many Democrats are awakening to the reality that their party has been hijacked by a radicalism completely unfamiliar to their parents’ and grandparents’ Democratic Party.
Democrats are second-guessing him privately (and sometimes publicly).
But rest assured, Barack Obama is confident he’s got five-and-a-half more years in the White House.
“Here’s one thing I know for certain,” Obama told Democratic donors last night in Washington. “The odds of me being re-elected are much higher than the odds of me being elected in the first place.”
Nice Deb 