Why are Obama Critics So Dumb - Newsweek

Why Are President Obama's Defenders So Dumb?

Posted 01/17/2012 07:10 PM ET

A new low for Newsweek. none View Enlarged Image

Media Bias: A presidential infomercial posing as a news magazine distorts the record to shamelessly shill for a failed administration. Why do we criticize the man who made the high-speed trains run on time?

Political campaigns call it free media: when candidates can make their case and communicate their message through interviews and outlets that don't cost a dime.

It helps when a mainstream media sycophant like Andrew Sullivan gets to write a puff piece in Newsweek with the subtle title of "Why Are The President's Critics So Dumb?" The Democratic National Committee couldn't have said it better.

Calling the president's critics dumb is not novel, and it's something President Obama and wife Michelle have done often. When ObamaCare was being shoved down our throats behind closed doors, the president said he had simply not made the case clearly enough so that opponents in flyover country, those bitter townsfolk clinging to their Bibles and guns, could get it.

Sullivan says it's "not true" Obama "has raised taxes" and that ObamaCare "is much more moderate" than its critics claim. Well, let's start with Obama's raising the federal tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes to $1.01, which hits Occupy Wall Street's 99% hard and makes a mockery of the pledge not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000.

Then there are the ObamaCare taxes that took effect right after it was passed though the "benefits" won't appear until 2014. For starters, there's a 0.9% Medicare surtax on wages more than $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples, along with a 3.8% Medicare tax on investment income.

There's the "Cadillac tax" on high-value health plans from which unions sought exemption. There are the individual and employer mandates that require employers to provide or individuals to buy health insurance.

So egregious are these added taxes and costs the Obama administration has had to issue 1,200 waivers to favored companies and labor unions supporting the president's re-election.


Meanwhile, insurance costs have risen, not fallen, and the promise of health care rationing and doctor shortage
Sullivan repeats administration talking points on nonexistent employment growth. But as we've pointed out, unemployment remains at an unacceptably high 8.5% and the figure is that low only because we don't count those who have dropped out of the work force or limp along with part-time jobs. With the failed stimulus, Obama promised unemployment wouldn't exceed 8%.

The president has also piled on more debt in three years than President Bush did in eight — the most rapid increase in the debt under any U.S. president. Are you better off than you were $5 trillion ago?

Sullivan repeats the canard about Obama inheriting a bad economy, claiming "economies take time to shift course." Yet Obama said at the start he would be a one-term president if he didn't turn things around in three years. All he has done is run the economy aground.
President Reagan inherited a bad economy. But instead of nationalizing everything in sight, he cut taxes and let the entrepreneurs loose. Real GDP today is a mere 0.04% above its pre-recession peak. At the comparable point in the Reagan recovery, unemployment had plunged to 7.3%, while the economy had grown 12% above its pre-recession peak and was still climbing fast.

On foreign policy, Sullivan says Obama "reversed Bush's policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his ... death." But that course was plotted and locked in long before Obama took over, fueled by information gleaned using "enhanced interrogation techniques" that Obama rejected in favor of civilian trials for the likes of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Americans see a president who squanders resources on high-speed rail, politically connected solar panel makers and other green enterprises that go bankrupt, and electric cars that catch fire while he dithers like Hamlet over a pipeline from Canada that could cut energy costs and bring up to 250,000 jobs over its lifetime.

They see a president who has kept one of his promises — to make energy prices "necessarily skyrocket" as his EPA declares war on fossil fuels and domestic energy while mandating that through the use of bio-fuels we put food in our gas tanks as food prices also skyrocket.

They see a military gutted by budget cuts to make up for bloated and runaway domestic spending.

They see allies like Britain and Israel abandoned while a mortal enemy, Iran, is ignored as it proceeds virtually unimpeded to a nuclear weapon. The Russian "reset" button has resulted only in the betrayal of allies such as Poland and Czechoslovakia on missile defense.
The president touts an "Arab Spring" while Shariah law takes hold in Libya and Islamists take over in Egypt. Iran salivates as our withdrawal leaves a vacuum Tehran is all too willing to fill. We're now willing to negotiate with a Taliban we once condemned as terrorists.

All in all, it's an abysmal record of domestic and foreign failure, of an oppressive government that spawned the Tea Party movement and left most Americans fearful the country their children will inherit will be one of debt and despair in an increasingly dangerous world.
No surprise, then, that the latest Real Clear Politics average shows roughly two-thirds of Americans (65.3%) believing the country is on the "wrong track," vs. 28.3% who think things are fine. Or that a recent Gallup poll shows nearly two-thirds see a big yet ineffective government as "the biggest threat" to the country.

In other words, Mr. Sullivan, they get it — even if you and the president's other defenders are too dumb to.