Profiles In Pusillanimity

Barack Hussein Obama continues to make John Finger Kerry look like a rock - and on two issues dear to nutters everywhere.

Public campaign financing, for one:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday he’ll bypass the federal public financing system in the general election, abandoning an earlier commitment to take the money if his Republican rival did as well.

Obama, who set records raising money in the primary election, will forgo more than $84 million that would have been available to him in the general election. He would be the first candidate to do so since Congress passed 1970s post-Watergate campaign finance laws. Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee in waiting, has taken steps to accept the public funds in the general election.

Obama officials said they decided to take that route because McCain is already spending privately raised funds toward the general election campaign. Obama has vastly outraised McCain, however, and would likely retain that advantage if McCain accepts the public money.

More like definitely.  I've seen numbers bandied about for Obama's prospective cumulative take of anywhere from a(nother) hundred million to as much as half a BILLION dollars between now and November.

Any of our readers who are baseball fans will be familiar with Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, as well as his salary, which is bigger than the GDPs of a handful of poor, Third World countries.  Once upon a time, at the genesis of that ungodly fortune, he played for the Seattle Mariners.  After the 2000 season he entered his first big crack at free agency.  To his chagrined surprise, he didn't find many takers at his presumed asking price (thought to be at least a hundred million over five years).  The M's were offering ninety mil over that same period, and it looked like he was going to have to settle for the "hometown discount".

Then, out of nowhere, Texas Ranger owner Tom Hunt threw A-Rod a stunning offer: $252 million - a quarter BILLION smackers - over ten years.  Even today that's a jaw-dropping sum; back then it was unimaginable.

The all-star shortstop mulled it over for a space of time likely measurable in seconds, and grabbed Hunt's offer before somebody could feed him his meds.

Mariner fans have booed A-Rod every time he's come back to Seattle since as a dirty, rotten, greedy bastard.  I've never been one of them, though, and for one, simple, honest reason: could any of us, if put in his position, turn down that kind of money to do what we love?  Doubltess there are some fans who would, but I can't believe there are anywhere near as many of them as there are who give the now-Yankee such a relentlessly hard time about it.

In the same way, I don't begrudge False Messiah bailing from a public financing system that would limit him to a fraction of what he can rake in independently of it.  He'd be a fool not to.

The thing about A-Rod, though, that most contributed to Seattle fans' hostility to him is when he claimed, at the Rangers presser announcing his signing, that his decision "isn't about the money".  Similar to that template, Lucifer is claiming that it IS about all the Republicans' money:

One of the reasons Obama offers is that the McCain campaign and the RNC take lobbyist money.  So does the DNC and many of its subsidiaries.  Obama has lobbyists among his major bundlers.  It’s an absurdly flimsy excuse.

So too was the other major reason Obama cites in his video.  He claims that the Republicans have mastered the art of the 527, which has nothing to do with public financing.  Democrats have their own 527s, and in 2004 used them much more effectively than the GOP, thanks to George Soros and other big-ticket Democratic donors.   This excuse doesn’t even pass the smell test.

Barack Hu$$ein Obama, hanging a facade of poverty begging over his rapacious expediency.  It is to laugh.

But not for his closest supporters.  Further campaign finance restrictions (aka "reforms") were (note the tense) one of the lynchpins of his prooffered political vision.  It was one of his corest of core principles.  It was one of his guaranteed money-shot lines.  Now he's tossed it overboard, Bill Clinton-like - only his media worshippers aren't marveling at his nimbleness, or even covering his ass, but are - at least for the moment - sharpening up the long knives instead:

Of the editorial boards that opined Friday about his breaking the pledge, most of those that endorsed him during the primary were aggressive in their criticism.

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s called the decision “as disappointing as it is disingenuous,” while the Boston Globe’s wrote it “deals a body blow … to his own reputation as a reform candidate.” And the Baltimore Sun’s editorial called it “a major disappointment for those struggling to restrain the pernicious influence of special interests in American politics.”

The New York Times’ editorial board, which endorsed Clinton after allegedly leaning toward Obama, wrote that “Obama has come up short” of “his evocative vows to depart from self-interested politics.”

Obama attempted a preemptive defense of his new position by arguing that his massive base of small online donors constitute a “parallel public financing,” and that he needed to exit the program to defend himself from the independent spending of 527 groups, long a bugaboo of campaign finance reformers. Many editorial boards, though, have been outright dismissive of this argument.

The Washington Post opined that Obama’s “effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take.”

And USA Today, which also did not endorse any candidates, said Obama put “expediency over principle,” was “disingenuous about his reasons for opting out of public financing” and proved he’s not a “real reformer.”

This friendly fire probably won't last.  But over the long haul of the campaign it may take the edge off the dingle-tingling outrageousnous of the bias with which the Enemy Media bowed down to False Messiah.  They'll still tilt toward him, but not like they once did - particularly with their favorite RINO as his general election opponent.

Several story morals come to mind upon reflection.  One is to make sure you lie to your enemies rather than your friends.  Another is to wait until your friends need you more than you need them - and after you're already safely elected and entrenched in power - before you betray them.  And a third is never tell a lie you can't slither your way out of.  That was part of Bill Clinton's genius at prevarication - he was the best ever at it, but he also strictly observed those three rules.  Barry O cast them to the four winds, and he's reaping the press whirlwind, exemplified by leftie and Robert Novak nemesis Mark Shields' righteous dudgeon, both on PBS and in his subsequent column:

It was a flip-flop of epic proportions. It was one that he could not rationalize or justify. His video was unconvincing. He looked like someone who was being kept as a hostage somewhere he was so absolutely unconvincing in it. It could not have passed a polygraph test.

I mean, coming up with this bogus argument the Republicans have so much more money — the Republicans don’t have so much more money. He’s raised three times as much as John McCain has....

Sounds good until you check the facts. McCain has raised a grand total of $650,000 from the lobbying industry (Obama pledges not to accept lobbyists’ or PAC money), according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and just 1% of his contributions are from PACs. Talk about a paper tiger.

But everybody remembers the most famous 527 group of all, the 2004 “Swift boats” attack ads questioning John Kerry’s bravery in Vietnam. Here are the numbers: The 527 spending has heavily favored Democrats over Republicans in every election cycle since 2000. In 2004, Democratic-leaning 527 groups spent $316 million to Republican-leaning 527s’ $113 million. So far in 2008, the 527 spending has been $116 million to $69 million in favor of the Democrats.

Obama complicated his current situation by publicly proposing in March 2007 an agreement between the two major party nominees to rely exclusively upon public financing for the general election. John McCain immediately agreed. Last November, Obama stated: “I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election,” and on February 26, Obama told the late Tim Russert, who had asked him if he might “break your word” on his public financing pledge, “I will sit down with John McCain and make sure that we have a system that works for everybody.”

Ensign Ed tacks on the peroration:

Obama lied about the 527s. He smeared McCain by accusing him of having fueled his campaign on lobbyist donations. He reversed reality by calling Republicans “masters” of the 527 strategy that his allies George Soros and MoveOn dominated in 2004 and 2000. And Obama didn’t even have the courage to negotiate with his political opponent while telling voters that we shouldn’t fear negotiating with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

And now his position on another core nutter issue has {*ahem*} "evolved":

In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party’s base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush Administration’s warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists. ….

This marks something of a reversal of Obama’s position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate February 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY).

Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the “Potomac Primaries,” but issued a statement that day declaring “I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty.”

He still is locked in a fight with Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democrat nomination, as he appears to be realizing.  And don't you have to marvel at that italicized prissy euphemism?  "Something of a reversal"?  It's an about-face that would send almost anybody else's nose rotating around their skull like Daffy Duck's bill when Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny are in the vicinity.  It's not a flip-flop, it's not a somersault, it's a diving twisting sukahara with three back somersaults and four and a half twists off the ten meter platform.

Yeah, it's a "repositioning" for the general election campaign, and sure, Obamanation will follow along after several stiff belts of Drammamine, but it's still a dangerous game to be playing for a man who is not out of the Clinton woods yet, whose lead over John Sith McCain is stalled in the mid-single-digits, and whose very candidacy was posited on being a knight in shining armor, a "post-partisan reformer," "America's deliverer," the "Messiah" himself.

To dig down through all the layers of that dazzling package to find Bill Clinton without the skill or subtlety, like opening up your biggest gift on Christmas morning and finding not the newest video game you've been lusting after for months but a ten-year-old, heavily used, anatomically correct GI Joe "action" figure, has got to be quite a letdown for at least some of the Obamanators who've been dancing around his golden calf for all this time.  Sheesh, if they were going to get a lying sack of pus anyway, they would have been better off with....

....Mrs. Clinton.  And superduperdelegate votes aren't final until the Denver convention.

Hmmm....