The Left's Rhetorical Pickpocketry

It's enough to make a certified Reaganite throw his Pocket-Constitution at the television.

For years, Democrats and habitués of the political/cultural Left have been co-opting our 39th president's words and accomplishments. Remember Bill Clinton conceding sixteen years ago at a Houston, TX fundraiser that he'd raised taxes too much? A Reaganesque pose in a room full of Democrat fat-cats.

Nowadays, when the formerly anti-anti-communists reference last century's clash with global Communism they wax, dewy-eyed, about "our" victory over the Soviet Union and how "we" outlasted Marxist tyranny and cut loose Eastern Europe. Not a peep about their previously tireless efforts to hogtie ol' Dutch's every move against the Moscow menace.

Lately, however, Barak Obama - that crystalline embodiment of all things Leftist - and his abettors have taken the "Progressive" yen for Reaganphilia to new heights. How many times have they alluded to RR's debt-ceiling hikes during this summer's barbed debate? ("Reagan raised the debt a number of times, so why can't we?"). Or paid homage to his compromise on tax rates and government spending with levy-happy Democrats?

Point of fact, our current, radical Chief Executive and his increasingly radical political fraternity start filching conservative-themed, traditional-toned sound bites whenever they find themselves jammed by plummeting poll numbers or backed into a public-relations corner. Their hypocrisy, tweaking La Rochefoucauld, must be the honor Liberal ditziness pays to Conservative common-sense.

For quite a while now, our Socialist-in-Chief has been disingenuously pounding the podium about small businesses' pivotal role in America's economic recovery. Main-Street enterprises are "the backbone of our economy … the cornerstones of our communities" he gushed in August 2010. May following he insisted they "embody the promise of America". And we heard more of same at this month's operatically choreographed "Jobs Speech" before Congress.

All this Chamber-of-Commerce stuff, mind you, comes from the same Speechifier whose "millionaires and billionaires" puerilities potentially threaten higher tax rates for every thriving Sub-Chapter-S convenience store, dry cleaner and landscaping outfit. In practice, President "Horatio Alger" is an unapologetic booster of the stifling regulation state. Turns out, the very same month (July) he was rhapsodizing about vital mom-and-pop operations, more than six hundred new, deadening federal rules were either proposed or finalized, at a knee-wobbling $9.5 billion cost.

To a February 2010 Business Roundtable gathering, Obama averred "I am an ardent believer in the free market." One would almost think he'd just come from an Adam Smith seminar hosted by Art Laffer, Steve Forbes, Jr., and Larry Kudlow -- except that Obamacare, a chilling raft of new EPA dictums, Dodd-Frank, and berserk government spending heap serious doubt on Prez O's pro-capitalism bona fides.

Of late, the top Democrat's even gone all "America-the-Beautiful" on us. In the face of daunting, fiscal sclerosis he's taking stabs at citizenry motivation, lobbing patriotic noises at them. Coming out of a true-blue "right-winger's" mouth, they'd dependably be deplored as positively jingoistic. Even Xenophobic.

We'll make it through our national travails, he blusters, because “we are Americans”. “We are the United States of America!” he recites from the teleprompter - doing his best impression of a genuine, God-and-Country-cherishing, flag-brandishing traditionalist. Not a particularly effective mimic, alas, because non-comatose folks haven't forgotten he's consistently staffed his White House with Statist ideologues who evince nose-crinkling discomfort at most things Americana.

In recent weeks, this most narcissistic of Presidents has been floating lump-in-the-throat paeans to putting the USA’s well-being first. Step aside, crass, partisan ambitions!

“We need folks in Washington to make decisions based on what’s best for the country, not what’s best for any political party or special interest,” he’s lectured more than occasionally. Sadly, such glowing magnanimity was out of sight when Obamacare was bullyingly bustled through the House and Senate. That was then, keep in mind; this is now.

And Mr. Obama's posture toward our fighting forces? Saturated with the most repellant kind of cynicism. During last spring's budget squall and, more recently, while sparring with Tea-Party types over the debt-ceiling, our troops' remuneration became a handy negotiating chip: Go my way, or our warriors may miss their pay! 

Drawdown plans for our military's exertions in Afghanistan or Iraq? They line up suspiciously with what analysts think will appease the President's military-allergic base in time for the 2012 election. Hardly in evidence is prioritizing what’s best for scrupulously completing the original mission. Shades of the stereotypical Dove’s distaste for national security.

When a glad-handing visit to a military base, rubbing shoulders with terrorist-killing special operators, or a photo of the Commander-in-Chief saluting slain Navy SEALs’ coffins proves politically advantageous, however? These are parade marched front-and-center on the president's agenda. 

Liberal nostrums handsomely sketched out on the blackboard end up faltering when they hit the blacktop. Big-government theories, shining in the classroom, collapse in the boardroom. Every time Mr. Obama plays conservative dress-up, it's as if he's conceding that. Leftism’s glib, statist utopianisms won't cut it in the no-nonsense world - or with majorities of sensible Americans.

So, tactical, slightly right-wingy curtsies to reality aim at scraping together just enough political support for Obama and Company to press on with their actual agenda. And that agenda? Camouflaged though it may be by intermittent, conservative feints, it still winds up at odds with most everything a whole bunch of bamboozled, but hard-working, trying-to-raise-a-family, surviving-the-grind voters were expecting.