Obama Instructs Media: Remember I’m a Centrist
After spending several days telling the Supreme Court how to do its job, in yet another hectoring speech for which he’s become famous, President Obama decided to tell the news media how to do their jobs. To report things correctly, journalists need to keep in mind that he is a centrist, not a liberal.
“I think it’s important to remember that the positions that I am taking now on the budget and a host of other issues, if we had been having this discussion 20 years ago or even 15 years ago would’ve been considered squarely centrist positions,” Obama said at a speech to Associated Press customers. Excerpt of the speech is below and then the video of the actual speech:
OBAMA: [T]his bears on your reporting. I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. And an equivalence is presented which I think reinforces peoples’ cynicism about Washington generally. This is not one of those situations where there's an equivalence. [...]
And so I think it’s important to put the current debate in some historical context. It’s not just true, by the way, of the budget, it’s true of a lot of the debates we’re having out here. [...]
As all of you are doing your reporting, I think it’s important to remember that the positions that I am taking now on the budget and a host of other issues. If we had been having this discussion 20 years ago or even 15 years ago would’ve been considered squarely centrist positions.
What's changed is the center of the Republican Party. And that's certainly true with the budget.
And while it is true that Republicans have moved rightward since the Tea Party, the actual fact is that politics generally, contrary to Obama's assertion, has actually moved leftward as Jay Cost pointed out in a post for the Weekly Standard in 2011:
In the last fifty years, the entire political discourse has shifted to the left, in large part because of the Great Society. Liberals today are more liberal than their counterparts in the 1950s or early 1960s, and conservatives are more liberal as well!
Consider, for instance, Gerald Ford. He is regularly cited as an example of a Republican who would be far too moderate for today’s rabidly conservative GOP. Yet looking at his legislative track record from the mid-1960s, that argument becomes untenable.
1. He voted against the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which sent funds to cities to combat poverty.
2. He voted to recommit Medicare/Medicaid to the House Ways and Means Committee, with instructions to create a voluntary program.
3. He voted against the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, which provided federal funds to local schools.
4. He voted against making Housing and Urban Development a cabinet-level position.
5. He voted to recommit the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 with instructions to remove the rent subsidies for poor families.
6. He voted against repealing Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which authorizes right to work laws.
7. During the Great Society period (1964-1966), Ford received a legislative score of just 9/100 from Americans for Democratic Action and 3/100 from the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education.
The only politically contentious issue from this list in today’s debate is right to work. Everything else is settled in principle. Republicans regularly vote for anti-poverty and urban programs, Medicare and Medicaid funding, education funding, and so on. When the GOP had complete control of the government from 2003 through 2007 none of these programs disappeared. In other words, the Republican party once opposed the Great Society, but with the passage of time, it has accepted the politically popular elements of it. The debate today is not whether the federal government should support these activities, but who should control the funds, how should the programs be evaluated, and what level of funding will achieve maximum results?
Hat tip: Rusty Weiss.
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Comments
Why are we talking about
Submitted by misterbee241 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 2:29pm.
Gerald Ford? Lets talk about Obama.
It's centrist to add $5 trillion to the deficit in 3 years
Submitted by frank14 on Thu, 04/05/2012 - 10:00am.
and add $12 trillion in unfunded mandates to our children. How moderate of Hussein!
I think, if I remember correctly...
Submitted by c5then on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 2:40pm.
That Hugo Chavez once admonished the media in Venezuela with almost EXACTLY the same words...
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
Listen to what obumbles says!
Submitted by OldJarhead77 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 2:42pm.
OBAMA:
“I think it’s important to remember that the positions that I am taking now on the budget and a host of other issues, if we had been having this discussion 20 years ago or even 15 years ago would’ve been considered squarely centrist positions,” Obama said at a speech to Associated Press customers. Excerpt of the speech is below and then the video of the actual speech:
OBAMA: [T]his bears on your reporting. I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
So what he is saying that since he is a centerist and the truth lies somewhere in the middle then he is ALWAYS RIGHT!!!! That his policies and programs can be the only right ones! He is an ARROGANT NARCISST!! REMOVE HIM FOR THE OFFICE FOR ABUSE OF POWER! (here is the only example you need... yet not the only example that exists)
Kennedy
Submitted by bmac32 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:18pm.
Was the last centrist Democrat, Obama is a far left nut job.
Lieberman was centrist.
Submitted by Dan The Man 2 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 9:45pm.
Lieberman was centrist.
I'm sorry but being in the
Submitted by MichaelPaladin on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:18pm.
I'm sorry but being in the middle, between the left and far left is not a centrist. I just wonder what kind of meltdown he is going to have if the Supreme Court strikes down ObamaCare, or will he just disreguard that ruling because he doesn't like it?
Read Rush
Submitted by bmac32 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:25pm.
Over at wnd.com
This is yet another example
Submitted by celator on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:44pm.
This is yet another example of how Obama can look you straight in the eye and tell another ginormous whooper. It's also an example of how the AP editors swoon over Obama's lies and distortions. What a pathetic bunch of propagandists they are.
Did
Submitted by azgal602 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:46pm.
Did he have to read that statement off the "teleprompter"?
REMEMBER I'M A CENTRIST
Submitted by azgal602 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 3:47pm.
Did he have to read that statement off the "teleprompter"?
Yeah, well, you know what, Barack??
Submitted by motherbelt on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:03pm.
It AIN'T 15 or 20 years ago!
So who cares???
Oh, wait! I guess the point is that you haven't changed, the country has!
And that's a problem for you, right?
Again, who cares?
Wrong
Submitted by JLin on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:07pm.
You sir are a Marxist, and no American.
air sic bag please
Submitted by foolnomore on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:38pm.
wow ,,the wooden puppet speaks with forked tongue.
The Week Obama Jumped the Shark
Submitted by vrwc13 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 4:57pm.
Great article on the pResident's week.
From a community organizer to president, seems that our pResident comes up short on math, law, and truth.
...a president who is living in a fantasy world — a place where facts and history are inverted, lies become truth, where everything is subordinated to ambition and you simply make things up as you go along.
It appears he fulfills the first and foremost premise of the famed 'Peter Principle'.
I don’t know what the political effect of all this will be. But intellectually, this is the week where Barack Obama jumped the shark. In a deep, fundamental way, he is no longer a serious man. Nor an honest one. His public words are now purposefully bleached of truth. And that is a painful thing to have to say about an American president.
v
The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne
In the center
Submitted by oldfart on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 5:18pm.
between Chavez, Castro and Guevara?
I didn't read Obama's chief
Submitted by TE on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 5:36pm.
I didn't read Obama's chief press release writer/useful idiot/dupe/hack/flack (i.e., Jackie Calmes of the New York Times) today, but I suspect that if she wrote something on Obama's ludicrous claim that he is a "centrist" that Jackie Calmes would have begun her dutifully written press release for Obama like this:
"Given his decades of solidly pragmatic, moderate, centrism, President Obama cited such evidence of centrism to combat the false, unsubstantiated allegations made by far, far, far, far right Republicans, who dominate the Republican party, that he is not in the mainstream of America ...."
The Dear Ruler is a centrist, all right
Submitted by Dave. on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 8:04pm.
He is wedged in right in between Stalin and Mao.
-Dave
Vote for the American in November
A centrist? 20 years ago?
Submitted by retrocon on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 8:04pm.
I think he meant 22 years ago...
In the Soviet Union...
Reported by Pravda.
EXCUSE ME!!!
Submitted by needle on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 8:42pm.
In the last fifty years, the entire political discourse has shifted to the left, in large part because of the Great Society.
EXCUSE ME!!!
I think the fact that the MSM has substantially shut down conservative discourse for the last fifty years, and especially in recent years and decades, may have just a wee bit to do with the leftward shift the nation’s the entire political discourse (much like Stalin’s policies had something to do with the disappearance of the Kulaks).
- Looking forward to the self-annihilation of the Manipulated Stories Machine.
This side....that side........
Submitted by GregE on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 9:37pm.
meeting in the center?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOaLLdpVzAs
If Barry has to . . .
Submitted by rick.bren on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 10:16pm.
. . .remind the press he's a centrist, he ain't!
I just was watching and
Submitted by killa37 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 11:06pm.
I just was watching and listening to JayBird Carney - the Lt. Fuzz of the Camp Swampy headquarters for propoganda, lies, tall tales, fabrications, and distortions...................with Boy Baraka being the equivilent of General Halftrack - or in his case, he could be General Halfbreed, General HalfAssed, General HalfBaked, or any number of other descriptions. And li'l Opie was doing his best to 'defend' Boy Baraka's veiled threats to the Supreme Court, and spinning it in any direction that he could - saying ANYTHING to make it sound like it was no big deal, and actually a good thing.
I believe he finished his rambling pack of alibis and excuses and explanations for alibis and excuses by stating that Boy Baraka WAS a 'constitional scholar and professor'...........................well, do we have any proof of that - YET?????
Centerist as in everything
Submitted by LAM SON 719 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 11:44pm.
Centerist as in everything must center on me, my wants, needs and desrires. Obey minnions!
Yeah, LAM.............it's
Submitted by killa37 on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 11:51pm.
Yeah, LAM.............it's all about ME ME ME!!! Sh@t - I just got an email from a friend that contained some half-time basketball show that Barry had wormed his way into, and he was talkin' (Obamaspeak) about how he was helpin' a female coach run some plays and coach the team - I'm thinkin' it might have been for his daugter, but I'm not sure. And he went on to say that they ended up winnin' their division, and although he really didn't want to take credit for it, he was just helpin' the coach to make her team better.
jeez..............I wanted to puke, as usual. More damn 'I's' than an eye-doctors clinic!!!
Baracko should...
Submitted by bigdaddy on Thu, 04/05/2012 - 10:16am.
...just have his staff write the headlines and stories for the media....oh wait...nevermind....
Obama
Submitted by maxvelos on Fri, 04/06/2012 - 12:27am.
Did You here what dirtbag Howard Dean said about Republicans today? Google Howard Dean. The far left is desperate! Obama and his ilk will hammer the Republicans,as the democrats can't push their accomplishments! They have none. It will be that Republicans are racists and don't care about the ,middle class! The Democrats have nothing! We have to do everything humanly possible by voting out Obama and the Democrats in the Congress and the Senate. The country stands a chance if that happens. If Obama wins again,we have lost this once great nation. Our children will have NO future. By 2016,this country will be completely gone. You won't recognize it! This is the most important election in our history. I already feel we've lost alot of our freedoms. I can't imagine what it would be like in 2016! The thought makes me shudder. How did we let this clown get elected. the media takes alot of the blame for not vetting him! A horrible president would be three tiers up for him! An obomination !