ABC news caught up to Obama, and asked him about one of his biggest flip flops since Gitmo. When asked if it was a mistake to vote against the debt limit as a senator, the president said:
I think that it’s important to understand the vantage point of a Senator versus the vantage point of a…President. When you’re a Senator, traditionally what’s happened is this is always a lousy vote. Nobody likes to be tagged as having increased the debt limit for the United States by a trillion dollars… As President, you start realizing, "You know what? We-- we can’t play around with this stuff. This is the full faith in credit of the United States." And so that was just a example of a new Senator, you know, making what is a political vote as opposed to doing what was important for the country. And I’m the first one to acknowledge it.
That's a very long winded way of saying that as a senator, he was trying to take political advantage of a situation. But now that he's a president, he has to be an adult.
I'm glad that the president is acknowledging his mistakes. (Even if he is doing that whole "I'm better then most people" thing, while doing it) What appalls me is that at no point does he recognize how completely craven it was for him to "play politics" with trillions of debt.
From Real Clear Politics, the breakdown. I had read that all but five Republicans had voted against her, and that one Democrat voted for her. So I wanted to know who those people were.
The Democrat was Nebraskan Ben Nelson, who was already targeted by the left. The Republicans who voted against the grain of their party are: Lugar from Indiana, Collins and Snowe from Maine, Gregg from New Hampshire, and Graham from South Carolina.
There's nothing that annoys me more then when something is pulled out of context to make it sound more inflammatory then what it already is. Particularly when someone says something controversial in the first place. Here's an example.
You probably found this quote somewhere recently:
"And I believe 2010 is it. All right? And we can do it with our vote. And we can get new faces in, whether it's my face or not, I pray to God that I see new faces. And if we don't see new faces, I'm cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I'm serious about that, and I bet you are, too."
"That's the beauty of this, folks. We can do it before it gets to guns," said Behney, in praise of the electoral process. "All right, our founders brought out the guns. When they showed up at Lexington and Concord, regular folks, farm boys, doctors, merchant men, and they said you ain't taking our stuff. They stood up to the most powerful army in the world, and they bought our freedom, literally with their blood. And we don't have to do that yet.
"I believe personally, we're at a crossroads. We have one last opportunity. And I believe 2010 is it. All right? And we can do it with our vote. And we can get new faces in, whether it's my face or not, I pray to God that I see new faces. And if we don't see new faces, I'm cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I'm serious about that, and I bet you are, too. But I know none of us want to go that far yet, and we can do it with our vote."
It reads a little differently that way, doesn't it? I mean, his whole focus is on the vote.
Look, I understand that its still a little inflammatory. But given that, why wasn't it quoted in full? Well, I think that the answer is obvious. The left has no interest in portraying Tea Party members accurately. Not when they've already drawn their cartoons.
"That's the beauty of this, folks. We can do it before it gets to guns," said Behney, in praise of the electoral process. "All right, our founders brought out the guns. When they showed up at Lexington and Concord, regular folks, farm boys, doctors, merchant men, and they said you ain't taking our stuff. They stood up to the most powerful army in the world, and they bought our freedom, literally with their blood. And we don't have to do that yet.
"I believe personally, we're at a crossroads. We have one last opportunity. And I believe 2010 is it. All right? And we can do it with our vote. And we can get new faces in, whether it's my face or not, I pray to God that I see new faces. And if we don't see new faces, I'm cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I'm serious about that, and I bet you are, too. But I know none of us want to go that far yet, and we can do it with our vote."
