Elections Obama

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I was going to write a post on the elections here in Illinois, but I just checked my registration (here for any other Champaign folk that move around a lot) and saw that I can't vote this year. I haven't registered since my last move, and for some reason I'm no longer registered in my last location. Oh well. I can't say I'm too upset, as the main race in my state is the gubernatorial one, where the challenger loves abortion only a little bit less than the incumbent. I am saddened, however, by the realization that I will not be able to pull the lever against Lisa Madigan, our preening, petty attorney general who last time around campaigned on shutting down crisis pregnancy centers.

So rather than get into the nitty-gritty, I'll simply link the Illinois Citizens for Life voting guide. I don't mean to imply that abortion is the be-all, end-all, but it's the best starting point, and most of the races are pretty black and white. I hasten to point out that Madigan's opponent has ICL's second best rating.

I'll also note that there is a write-in candidate from the Constitution Party. Check out his website here. Note to any future potential write-in candidates: if your last name is "Stufflebeam" you might consider shortening it before you ask people to hand-write it on a ballot. [UPDATE]: Prompted by a snarky comment I deleted for rudeness (not that I expect its author to return), I'll mention that I do support Stufflebeam as the superior candidate and would vote for him were I registered. Write in S T U F F L E B E A M ! [/UPDATE]

So instead of the big election post, I'll dump on my state's darling, Barack Obama.

On Sunday, Obama outed himself as a potential 2008 Democratic presidential candidate. The man personifies the phrase "wolf in sheep's clothing". Policy-wise, he is indistinguishable from any of the worst liberal boogeyman, yet he somehow wins praise as a "moderate."

Here's an example: Obama opposed an Illinois intiative to protect children who are born alive during the course of abortion. In other words: the doctor screws up the abortion, the baby is born, alive. America's Next President says, "Yes, you can kill that baby." He opposed bills to end partial-birth abortion and to require parental notification. It doesn't get any more extreme than that on abortion.

Then he gives a speech where he expresses shame for the language his website used to describe his abortion stance. He should not have called pro-lifers "ideologues," he says. This speech is widely hailed as an olive-branch to the religious. Obama is a "bridge-builder."

There's an old saw about the definition of an ambassador as someone who tells you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip. That's what this amounts to. Obama (and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and various other pro-abortion politicians in their own ways) say "we respect the view point, but we disagree." This is empty-headed cant. They're still telling those of us who abhor abortion to go to hell. When I hear somebody say they respect a preposterous belief, it leads me to suspect they respect neither the belief nor the person who holds it.

Back to Obama. What, exactly has he accomplished? He lost his first race for Congress in 2000, then in 2004 he beat up on.... Alan Keyes, a good man (who won every debate with Obama handily), but a horrible candidate. Since becoming senator, Obama's greatest achievement has been the Call to Renewal speech and writing a book.

He's a hard-core liberal with few achievements. So, could it be his life story that has inspired so many of his supporters?. Go here to see why that's a silly notion. Obama is a Harvard law school graduate and the son of a Harvard economist who was a Kenya native. Obama was born in Hawaii and raised there (except for a 4-year stint in Indonesia) by his white Kansan anthropologist mother. He's a life-long private school kid, whose only adventures in life seem to involve cocaine. That sounds more like our current executive's life story than an "up from the streets" or even "from a little town called Hope" narrative we might expect.

So what is it? Is it simply his skin color? Daniel Larison notes : "Yes, he’s charismatic. But so is Harold Ford [Papa Lu's note: Ford is the African-American candidate for the open Tennessee Senate seat], and you don’t see legions of adoring fans beating a path to his door to touch the Once and Future King." See Larison for Obama-bashing gone wild here, here, here and here.

So here we have this hard-core leftist who manages to wrap his leftism in a rational-sounding articulate black shell. Are people really buying it?

What are his prospects if he does run? Grim, I think. Yes, he's got charisma, I guess, and sure he's probably got the entire black vote. But he really got his rear end handed to him by Keyes in the 2004 debates, and he really has not been tested (except in losing to Bobby Rush just six short years ago). I can't imagine he would run thinking he's going to win.

The only angle I can imagine is Obama running, getting flailed in the primaries, and then usig the publicity of the run and the funds in his war chest to secure a spot as Veep. His name will be whispered and touted openly regardless of what happens, but a little self-promotion on the primary stage can only help. Thus we could very well end up with a Clinton-Obama ticket, which (nightmarish as it sounds), I quite frankly can't see winning less that 45% of the vote So perhaps there's some wisdom in Obama floating his name out there after all.

Parenthetically, sort of, following the trouncing of Congressional Republicans we'll be seeing in two weeks, I think we're looking at a rough decade for the GOP. Now, given the events of the past three years or so, I can't say I'll be sad for Republicans, except that it will be an absolute tragedy for the issue of abortion. For all the just criticism of Bush, simply having a Republican in the White House has stemmed a tidal wave of public funding (and aggressive governmental promotion) of abortions and embryo-destroying stem cell research. I don't see 2009 being a very good year for the fetus.

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This page contains a single entry by Papa-Lu published on October 25, 2006 7:31 PM.

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