"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

I usually don’t care for the “flip flop” label as it’s often misused.  A politician will strike out a complex position and be accused of flip-flopping.  But Obama’s been flopping the hell out of himself lately.  Earlier, we had the faith-based initiatives, which isn’t that much of a flop since he’s always been a part of the Religious Left.  Now, we have Welfare Reform:

Barack Obama aligned himself with welfare reform on Monday, launching a television ad which touts the way the overhaul “slashed the rolls by 80 percent.” Obama leaves out, however, that he was against the 1996 federal legislation which precipitated the caseload reduction.

“I am not a defender of the status quo with respect to welfare,” Obama said on the floor of the Illinois state Senate on May 31, 1997. “Having said that, I probably would not have supported the federal legislation, because I think it had some problems.”

Obama’s transformation from opponent to champion of welfare reform is the latest in a series of moves to the center. Since capturing the Democratic nomination, Obama has altered his stances on Social Security taxes, meeting with rogue leaders without preconditions, and the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.’s, sweeping gun ban.

Read the whole thing as it charts Obama’s official position in careful detail.  Now ten years is a long time and there are a lot of lefties—notably the New York Times—who vehemently opposed welfare reform but have since realized it was a great idea.  There’s a chance for Obama to stake out a “grown-up” position here and say, “I opposed it and I was wrong.  It shows that maybe conservatives have some good ideas.” But I suspect his moving to the right—on non-economic issues, is more in line with Greg Gutfield’s analysis:

Following this presidential campaign is like watching a friend of yours dump a psychotic, potentially homicidal girlfriend. In this case – Obama is the friend, and the crazy soon-to-be ex is the left. In the beginning, Obama could indulge the crazies over at the Huffington Post and Move On.org, simply because, back then, the rest of America didn`t know who he was. He could be every bit as loopy as they are – because the saner folk were too busy working real jobs.

But now that he has the nomination, he can drop the Wesley Clark`s of the world like a chlamydia-infested potato. Suddenly among the normal, Obama can no longer hold onto those nutty beliefs - which means, he must turn right. I predicted this months ago – the Democrats know you can`t run left because you`ll lose – which is funny, when you think about it. The only way your party can win, is to abandon your party`s beliefs.

See for yourself: Obama has flipped on the death penalty and thinks guns are peachy. He’s accepted the foreign surveillance act and he’s no longer entertaining high tea with Ahmadinejad. Now he`s up for expanding President Bush’s faith-based programs, and blasted Moveon.org for calling General Petraeus a traitor.

His crazy ex-girlfriend must be cutting up his underwear.

But it`s not over yet. You wait until Obama returns from Iraq– speaking of the brave troops, how violence has decreased and that the surge is working – and how, in effect, we are winning the war. At this point he will embrace the phrase his lefty brethren mocked so well, which is “stay the course,” and ultimately acknowledge that the whole thing might have been worth it after all. Once he abandons his idiotic stance on capital gains, the makeover will be complete.

So sit back and enjoy it, as the unbalanced ex-girlfriend roils in her basement apartment, blogging about her heartbreak to her loathsome friends, as the rest of us realize that Obama isn`t running against McCain, he`s turning into him.

I don’t think it will go that far.  If Obama isn’t against the war and for raising taxes, the massive liberal turnout he’s banking on in November will vanish.  But it is yet another example that Obama is a politician, for all his pretensions about change.  He’s a basically decent man and vast improvement over the loathsome Clintons.  He is a step in a better direction for the Democratic Party.  But, in the end, you don’t gain this much political power if you don’t have a little bit of the ruthless and a little bit of the pander in you.