Senator Backtrack Hussein Obama: Doing the Chameleon!

Even the MSM (in this case Jennifer Loven of the AP) can’t miss the flip-flops and backtracks that are coming so fast and furious as the DNC anointed one takes the fast back track to the center and beyond.  Love raises the specter of the last DNC Presidential candidate.  At this rate, I believe the RNC will just have to paste Obama’s head on the Kerry windsurfing ad and it’ll be President McCain.  Far from sounding like some kind of new politician that transcends politics-as-usual, Obama is channeling the worst kind of pandering to try to capture independent and moderate republican voters. The problem is that he only has about 54% of the Democratic base at the moment.  Judging from the howls of protests from the leftie blogs, he may be losing more of that base even though he’s  telling that group they have no place else to go.  Perhaps he’s forgetting the Gore/Bush election where Ralph Nader pulled the votes of issue-voting lefties.  Nader is in again and there is Cynthia McKinney and the Green Party.  She has already won the support of the Black Agenda Report.  I’m not sure that Senator Backtrack Obama can count the lefties as part of his firm base of support.

Here’s Loven’s succinct list of Backtrack Obama’s flip flops for the week:

On Iraq, Obama said Thursday that his upcoming trip there might lead him to refine his promise to quickly remove U.S. troops.

He now supports broader authority for the government’s eavesdropping program and legal immunity for telecommunications companies that participated in it, supporting the bill after some protections were added.

A handgun control proponent, he reacted to the Supreme Court overturning the District of Columbia’s gun ban by saying he favors both an individual’s right to own a gun as well as government’s right to regulate ownership.

Obama became the first major-party candidate to reject public financing for the general election after earlier promises to accept it.

He not only embraced but promised to expand Bush’s program to give more anti-poverty grants to religious groups, a split with Democratic orthodoxy.

He objected to the Supreme Court’s decision outlawing the death penalty for child rapists, drawing attention to his support for the death penalty if used only for the ”most egregious” crimes.

She also reports this that the RNC is reading to pounce on him.  Suprised?  Uhhhhh, nope!

”There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the national Republican Party.

It might be working. Despite disarray in Republican John McCain’s camp, Bush’s dismal approval ratings and just 17 percent of the public saying the nation is moving in the right direction, recent polls show Obama unable to build a solid lead over his GOP rival.

Look at that last line.  George W Bush has a dismal approval rating,  the Iraq war is highly unpopular and poll after poll shows how unhappy the American people are with the direction the country is headed.  As unpopular as Dubya is, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have managed to place Congress at even lower approval ratings.  This is despite two years of ascendency.

We have an unpopular congress and democratic leadership anointing Backtrack Obama and we have yet another example of the DNC putting up a very weak candidate.  We’re expected just to jump on that unity pony again and watch the country reject another Dukkakis, Mondale, second term Carter, and Kerry.  Have you noticed these are the very folks that are excited about Obama?

I’m reminded of the last letters between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.  Their relationship was embittered by Jefferson paying a pundit to tell nasty lies about Adams.  Abigail Adams never forgive Jefferson.  Adams, after 10 years of no contact between the two, re-opened communications.  What was their final correspondence ?  Basically, both men shared the fear that party politics would bring the fragile republic down.

Year after year we see a repeat of this pattern.  Pander to the base then turn around and pander to the middle.  The DNC has lost election after election with this strategy.  Hillary Clinton decided to break this pattern by not taking any positions in the primary that she would have to reverse in the fall.  The left is never a group to be pragmatic.  McCain’s never been fully accepted by the Republican base but the right never bolts from the party.  I doubt you’ll see any of them voting Barr (Liberatarian) in the fall.  Obama believes the Evangelical might be up for grabs, however, they tend to be more likely to just sit the fall election out than consider him acceptable.  This is not what the Obama campaign must think, however, as Backtrack Obama continues to take positions traditionally not supported by Democrats to try to pick up as many votes in the middle.  However, at what cost?  He is horrifying one democratic constituency after another.

If you see both candidates as unacceptable due to lack of firm stands on certain issues, what then is your voting criteria?  I’m going to extrapolate from the folks around me and say character.  Even though McCain is intemperate, his service to the country is long, well-known, and reliably documented.  Obama remains an enigma.  This is because of his many advisers come from the right wing Chicago school of Business, his pastors and friends come from the radical left, and his base support is from the DNC establishment with its role call of losers (let’s put Ted Kenndy in that pigeon hole along with the others listed above).  Also, he tells life story that are as much fiction as Forrest Gump.  His speeches these days are so tailored to the audience I feel as though I’m watching Woody Allen’s old movie Zelig.  Which costume and persona will Backtrack Obama finally adapt?

Who will corner and define this chameleon as we pull closer to being stuck with Hobson’s choice for a President who faces some really daunting challenges?