Our Chameleon President

This video isn’t breaking news, y’all. Even thought it’s about three weeks old, it’s worth posting just to demonstrate CNN having a Fox News moment:


It’s looks like the bloom is definitely off the Obama rose, doesn’t it?

And the new news is worse: a right now poll on CNN shows:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday also indicates that 7 in 10 Americans believe that the Democrats’ loss of their 60 seat supermajority in the Senate is a positive move for the country.

The Plum Line blog gives us some context on the poll:

CNN asked that question nine other times since Dems took control of Congress. In every other instance, voters said Dem control was good for the country by a wide margin, almost always by double digits.

The poll also finds that for the first time since the 2006 takeover, the number who have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party equals the number who view the Democratic Party favorably. That’s at 46% apiece.

The question is whether Dem leaders will decide they’re tanking because voters don’t like the health reform bill they’ve been trying to pass, making them decide to shelve it - or whether they’ll conclude that voters don’t like failure, making them redouble their efforts to pass something they can call a historic accomplishment. Anyone taking bets?

So are the Democrat leaders digging their heels in and telling the public, as usual, to kiss off?
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Surprise! Obama is going to cut spending. Must be the political winds blowing so cold off Lake Michigan that has made him decide it’s time for a fiscal freeze of his own:

President Barack Obama, moving to refocus his agenda on Americans’ anger over the tattered shape of their pocketbooks, is preparing new initiatives for federal belt-tightening and aid to middle-class families on problems ranging from child care and student loans to retirement savings and assistance with aging relatives.

The new priorities are expected to dominate Obama’s State of the Union address Wednesday, but the first concrete demonstration of the change came Monday at a White House meeting where the president and Vice President Joe Biden announced a set of proposed tax changes and other steps aimed at middle-class Americans.

“None of these steps alone will solve all the challenges facing the middle class,” Obama said. “But hopefully some of these steps will re-establish some of the security that’s slipped away in recent years. Because in the end, that’s how Joe and I measure progress - not by how the markets are doing, but by how the American people are doing. It’s about whether they see some progress in their own lives.”

Obama promised to “keep fighting to rebuild our economy so that hard work is once again rewarded, wages and incomes are once again rising and the middle class is once again growing.”

[…]

the soaring federal deficit, Obama will announce on Wednesday that the budget blueprint he files next week will contain a “hard freeze” on discretionary spending that lasts through 2013, an effort his advisers liken to the fiscal discipline families impose on themselves every day…

This is the smartest move our President has taken since he assumed office. Perhaps reality has caught up with him at last.

What a relief! No more drunken spending sprees. Of course, how we’ll pay for his first year in office is another matter. Just once, before this man leaves office, I’d like him to apologize for his administration’s impoverishment of so many Americans who actually voted for him. I sure didn’t, but lots of those he hoodwinked with his glib promises are sitting in the middle of their Obama-shattered dreams.

And this bit of news is a real heads-up. Obama always made it plain he was going to be a two-term president. He made no bones about this. Now, he’s facing reality on that front too:

“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” he told ABC’s “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview today.

Obama sat down with Sawyer two days before he will deliver a State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress, and he acknowledged the political setbacks of his first year in office.

The State of the Union will be Obama’s chance to jump start his agenda, but he ducked when Sawyer asked if he could guarantee there would not be a tax increase for anyone making less than $250,000.

“I can guarantee that the worst thing we could do would be to raise taxes when the economy is still this weak,” he replied.

Of course, when talking about their futures, politicians lie even as they breathe in and out. However, you can bet the other side will be using this bit of chat in their campaigns come 2012. As is the case with many of his utterances, this one may come back to haunt Barack Obama.

In his heart of hearts, you know he wants above all to be in that Oval Office in 2013, to get his socialist agenda fired up and running. Whether this new, contrite and fiscally conservative redefinition of himself will achieve that end remains to be seen. The about-face he’s doing now contradicts, even cancels, his earlier ideas.

Whether he can stomach a follow-through on these conservative ideas or not, the fact that he managed to get them past his teeth and over his lips is an amazing feat.


Hat tip: The Okie Lurker