Brass Knuckles

That’s what’s been bouncing around in my head like a big ol’ beach ball. 

Michael Steele is obsolete.  John McCain?  Buggy whip.

Initially, my idea was that they were merely impotent, but the more I think about it,  that’s mean and it’s  not really the case; the truth is that today’s RNC belongs to a bygone era – a kinder, gentler time.   I’ve been thinking it, but haven’t taken the time to comment on it – as you might notice by the timestamps, it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything.  

But then this afternoon I read a Michelle Malkin post that captures the essence of what I’ve been feeling, and then on the drive home I heard Dennis Miller giggling like a schoolgirl at Glenn Beck’s assertion that Barack Obama is racist. 

Guess what?  He is.  Barack Obama is a racist.  He attended a “black liberation” church for twenty years, he…  well, let’s see what he says about his own grandmother.

610 WIP host Angelo Cataldiasked Obama about his Tuesday morning speech on race at the National Constitution Center in which he referenced his own white grandmother and her prejudice. Obama told Cataldithat “The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know (pause) there’s a reaction in her that doesn’t go away and it comes out in the wrong way.”

“Typical white person…”, nice.  But you can’t fault him for that, because that is what he believes the average white person is:  racist.  Granted, in the case of sweet little old ladies like his grandmother, he believes it’s a soft racism,  but he sees racism nonetheless.   In the case of the Cambridge PD and his friend, Professor Gates of Harvard, he saw and called out racism even though he prefaced his whole commentary with and admission that he did not know the facts.   Why?  Because he sees what he believes, and as a bonus, it’s politically expedient. Lloyd Marcus in the American Thinker:

I am amazed that the President of the United States uses the same technique as the loud mouth guy in the movies. To pass his stimulus package, President Obama, from his bully pulpit, has created an angry mob against corporations, executives, Wall Street and the auto industry. Thus, when he outrageously overreached his authority by firing the CEO of GM, his angry mob replied, “Yeah, yeah, get them! Let’s string them up!”

Now, to pass his health care, Obama is back on the jail house steps yelling, “Let’s drag out those dirty low down doctors! They perform unnecessary surgery on kids! And those insurance companies, they only care about profits! Are you gonna stand for that?”

The crowd, “No! No!”

Obama, “Well, what are you gonna do about it?”

The latest on President Obama’s hit list are America’s policemen. “Let’s get those stupid racist profilers!” Without knowing the details of the Gate’s case, president Obama said the police acted stupidly. He obviously spoke from his belief that black men are usually abused by the police.

While the officer in the Gates case, according to the police report, performed professionally and by the book, there are bad apples in every profession. Shamefully, race profiteers such as Al Sharpton relish every isolated incident of unprofessional behavior, viewing it as a golden opportunity to portray all police as racists.

In Spanish, we have a saying that “…cuando tienes hambre, todo huele como comida.“  When you’re hungry, everything smells like food.  Or here in Texas, “…when you have a hammer, every  problem looks like a nail.”   Why did Obama call out racism even before he knew the facts?  His a priori beliefs about how white people, especially white policemen think and operate.  His racist and prejudicial a priori beliefs.  It was only a happy happenstance that the officer he maligned turned out to be a squeaky clean and upstanding moral man.

So why did Dennis Miller think that Glenn Beck calling Obama racist was silly and deserving of ridicule?  Because even Dennis Miller fails to realize what is at stake and the game that is being played by the Democrat party.   It’s not a game; the Democrats are playing hardball, and they are playing for all the marbles.  Michelle Malkin on a White House that goes well past Karl Rove and beyond Darth Vader:

Six months into the Obama administration, it should now be clear to all Americans: Hope and Change came to the White House wrapped in brass knuckles.

Ask the Congressional Budget Office. Last week, President Obama spilled the beans on the Today Show that he had met with CBO director Douglas Elmendorf – just as the number-crunchers were casting ruinous doubt on White House cost-saving claims. Yes, question the timing. The CBO is supposed to be a neutral score-keeper – not a water boy for the White House. But when the meeting failed to stop the CBO from issuing more analysis undercutting the health care savings claims, Obama’s budget director Peter Orszag played the heavy.

Orszag warned the CBO in a public letter that it risked feeding the perception that it was “exaggerating costs and underestimating savings.” Message: Leave the number-fudging to the boss. Capiche?

President Obama issued an even more explicit order to unleash the hounds on Blue Dog Democrats during his health care press conference. “Keep up the heat” translated into Organizing for America/Democrat National Committee attack ads on moderate Democrats who have revolted against Obamacare’s high costs and expansive government powers over medical decisions.

 In mid-July, the White House tried to bully the State of Arizona in order to pull their Senator John Kyl into the stimulus spending fold.

The White House on Tuesday released letters from four cabinet secretaries to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, citing Kyl’s comments and outlining transportation, housing, Indian education and other projects in his home state they said would be eliminated if the senator has his way.

Kyl, the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, has said the stimulus spending hasn’t succeeded in boosting the economy and that it’s adding to the deficit. He’s suggested on his Senate Web site and in interviews that spending not already allocated be halted.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, one of two Republicans in Obama’s cabinet, made no attempt to conceal his needling.

Kyl”publicly questioned whether the stimulus is working and stated that he wants to cancel projects that aren’t presently under way,” LaHood wrote Brewer. “If you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know.”

Responding to the letters, Kyl charged in a statement that the White House was resorting “to coordinated political attacks with the Democratic National Committee and the politicization of departments of government by using cabinet secretaries to issue thinly veiled threats to the governor and the people of Arizona.” He also urged the president to “consider whether the unallocated stimulus money could be put to better use.”

LaHood noted in his letter that at least $520.9 million of the $48 billion for transportation projects under the economic recovery act are intended for Arizona projects, including transit projects in Phoenix.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Arizona would lose $45 million for 500 single-family housing loans if projects not already under way were canceled. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said the state would forfeit $73 million his department oversees, including $22 million for homeless programs.

 The gloves are off, and yet the RNC has yet to even realize what is going on and instead is sending out whiny newsletters to past contributors and wasting time guesting on liberal late night talk shows.  

One of the keys to Democratic successes to date is that they understand the concept of an integrated battlefield (no pun intended).   Before they mount a campaign, the mainstream media preps the field for them, controlling information and directing the narrative.  The media also in many cases acts as their enforcers, beating down and discrediting anybody that opposes Democratic policy initiatives.  The Republican Party needs to understand how to work with the media and get their message out.  So far, the most effective commercial outlet for the conservatives has been hands-down talk radio.  Why is there no blanket conservative talk radio coverage in Western Pennsylvania, for example?  

Worse, the RNC is tone deaf when it comes to delivering their message.  I’ve seen one of their ads in opposition to Obamacare.  Whiny seems to be the tone that the Republicans do best.  “Our children will pay for the deficits…“   My, how very cliche and limp.  We love our kids, but the message being delivered is that the cost is way off in the future.  It’s not.  How about ads featuring Brits that hate the National Health Service and socialized medicine?  How about tracking down the Canadian that fought all the way to the Canadian high court for the right to come to America for treatment?

How about showing some loyalty to those who serve you? Why isn’t the Republican Party the party of taking care of veterans and bringing their fight to the forefront of American consciousness? Hell, how about showing Sarah Palin some loyalty?  You ran her, stand by her.  If you didn’t believe in her, you shouldn’t have run her.  But don’t behave like a scumbag and abandon her at the dance.  Honestly, though, there is a whole lot more at stake, and I don’t think that the Republican Party realizes that the Democrats are out for more than just blood and taxes.

Right now, it has been the Blue Dog Democrats that have been making themselves known in opposition to Obamacare.  If the Republican Party can’t rally the American public against that beast and effectively lead the opposition against socialized medicine, what good is it?   What can it do?