I enjoy watching Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, but when it comes to President Barack Obama, they have a very serious…and important…disagreement.
The disagreement is also very simple. While they are both troubled by aspects of Mr. Obama’s presidency (as am I), they have opposing views regarding what is inside his heart.
O’Reilly thinks that the president is basically a good decent guy. His intentions are honorable. He loves America as much as the rest of us.
His concerns are that the president is sometimes misguided and sometimes naive.
He didn’t explain his healthcare bill adequately. He doesn’t realize that the bill will bankrupt our country.
His intentions to reach out to Iran have not worked. He is an idealist that does not understand the depth of hatred that Iran has for us.
His intentions in the Middle East are noble, but he does not realize how much hatred the Palesimians have for Israel.
So in short, while the results may not be worth the effort, the thought process behind various decisions are decent.
Beck gives the president no quarter. He believes that there is something dark and sinister surrounding this administration. The people surrounding the president are bad people.
He deliberately concealed the details of his healthcare plan. He knows it will bust the budget because he wants to collapse the system. He wants this because he is a radical.
He embraces Iran because he wants a humbled America, since he believes in one world government.
He has a hostility toward Israel.
This disagreement matters because I hear various viewpoints when I speak around America. My prepared remarks are fairly non-controversial, but the question and answer sessions are often very lively.
One of my close friends believes Beck is right. Mr. Obama is a bad person.
I honestly do not know the truth, but I side with O-Reilly on this one.
I do this because I have to.
One day I am going to have to stand before God, and God help me if I misjudge a man in terms of what is in his heart.
I watched for eight years as the left ripped into George W. Bush. Now they are doing it to Sarah Palin. The left will say that these conservatives “deserve it.”
No they don’t. They are human beings. The left refuses to grasp this.
(In this instance it is not naivete. The leftists haters are terrible human beings that hate for the sake of hating. Nothing about their intentions are decent or honorable.)
Until I see evidence that the president has evil intentions, I owe him the benefit of the doubt.
I am not scared to call out anybody. Helen Thomas is an anti-Semite, and the world is better off without her bile.
Yet with the president, I just do not feel that level of viciousness inside him.
When I speak to conservative audiences, I go out of my way to make certain points when questions are asked that force me to address such issues.
I believe he is a good husband and father. This cannot be minimized. If Republicans go after him on family values, the left will bring up Mark Sanford, Mark Foley, and every other conservative that screwed up royally. If we lost the family values argument, we are done. His children are good kids, and he sincerely loves them.
What I then say is that his policies are bad for the families of the people in the audience.
Conservatives must stay away from the birth certificate issue. The man was born in Hawaii. Some conservatives wonder why he doesn’t bother just producing the document. This is so simple. The left loves this story because it makes the right look like lunatics.
A rumor broke out during the impeachment hearings that Bill Clinton exploded in anger during his testimony. The left allowed this rumor to go unchallenged. Then many people including myself watched the entire testimony. Clinton was completely composed. The right looked like numbskulls.
We have to get the story right if we are going to lambaste those who repeatedly get it wrong like the Jayson Blair Times.
We must not bring up the issue of whether he is a closet Muslim. The man says he is a Christian. Unless I have evidence he is lying, I have to take him at his word.
Regarding his Israel stance, I do not believe he is an anti-Semite. I believe he sees the Israelis and Palesimians as morally equivalent because he does not want to deal with anything that gets in the way of his domestic agenda. As Bill Cosby used to say, “Parents are not interested in justice. They want quiet.”
Obama is arrogant. He believes he can succeed in the Middle East where everybody else has failed. This is hubris. If everybody would shut up and shake hands, he could collect another award on the world stage. He does not hate or love Jews or Muslims. He loves himself. That makes him a narcissist, but not evil.
He also knows that there is no penalty for leaning on Israel because liberal Jews will cower and grovel and beg for his love like disaffected children. This makes Mr. Obama nothing but a smart, calculating politician that knows who he can push and when, and in how much degree.
So why does any of this matter?
I want to help build a lasting conservative majority in this country. This country is divided into (unequal) thirds.
The first third are the conservatives. Fellow Conservatives should not spend too much time preaching to the converted. It wastes time. Also, once primaries are over, Republicans and conservatives and independents on the right must come together and fall into line. This is non-negotiable.
The second group are those on the hard left. Do not spend time as conservatives arguing with these people. You will not sway them. You will waste your time and energy and just get frustrated.
Conservatives should spend 90% of their time talking to the third of Americans in the middle. These re the reasonable people who want to hear both sides, soak up information, and come to an intelligent conclusion. They don’t want anger. They want a train of thought that makes sense so they can say “ok, I’ll buy that argument.”
I use humor because it is a very effective weapon. Comedians on the left have been doing this forever, and the right needs to catch up. Being dour does not work. We cannot be the grumpy old party.
I do engage the left, but I am not actually talking to them. I am talking through them to entertain the people in the middle. This is why I showed up at the 2008 GOP Convention with a sign that said “Lesbian Vegans for Libya.” They really thought I was one of them. It was that easy.
The people in the middle decide elections. They have a loyalty to America, and want their leaders to succeed.
In 2004, the left failed to grasp that most Americans did not despise George W. Bush. They liked him personally but felt some frustrations.
The people in this country generally like Barack Obama. Trying to convince them to hate the guy will not work.
Go after him on policy. He is wrong on taxes, trade, Israel, environmental legislation, union card check, and a ton of other policy issues.
O’Reilly is sometimes criticized for bending over backwards to be fair.
Beck has no such compunctions. He just hacks away. His justification, which is perfectly fine by me, is that if he is wrong, the left should call him on it.
The left argues nonsensically that the president too busy to bother with such trivial people as Beck, but this is bogus. They just can’t find anything. Heck, I get lambasted for spelling mistakes. Beck drives the left bats because they have not disproven his assertions. Facts are stubborn things.
Yet connecting the dots is not the same as knowing what is in Mr. Obama’s heart.
On the issue of the president’s character, Beck even admits that he wants to be wrong. He seems very sincere in this claim.
I want Beck to be wrong as well. I don’t want my president (Yes, he is my president even though I fight him on most issues and am working to defeat him) to be a bad person.
So until I see evidence that Mr. Obama has the malice that Helen Thomas or others haters have, I cannot say that he is anything other than a man with policy positions and beliefs that are fundamentally flawed.
I hope O’Reilly is right, and that I am not foolish for giving the president the benefit of the doubt.
Yet that is what I am going to do.
He is doing a dreadful job as president. He is wrong on every issue that matters to me. He is making us less safe, and spending us into oblivion.
Yet if he comes to me with a handshake and offers to watch a ballgame, I will extend my hand and watch the game with him.
If he tries to sway me politically, I will let him know that I would rather, respectfully, just watch the game.
This center-right country means conservatives will gain power soon provided we do not give in to our baser instincts and adopt the destructive rhetorical poison that defines the left.
eric
Well said Eric. I couldn’t agree more. Although this notion of conservative (and liberal for that matter) is problematic. Where do we draw the line. Each issue has its own spectrum and most people don’t fit the same place on each. If you are in favor or legal abortion does that make you not a conservative. If you in favor of our actions in Iraq does tha make you nto a liberal. I think far too often single issues are used to draw the line which don’t properly chartacterizethe nature of peoples veiws on the whole. Mostly people tend to drift to one party or the other because on the issues that are most important tho them (at any given time) that party/candidate agrees with them and they accept the areas of disagreement.
pardon the awful typing…no way to edit after hitting submit :-(
Either to believe the president is too naive to grasp the world around him and the consequences of his actions or to believe the president represents some cabal bent on the destruction of America is childishly foolish. Comical at best. Obama is a bright, educated, wise man who is well-aware of the world around him and fully comprehends the consequences of his actions. He obviously feels the weight of his office. He is doing what he believes is right balanced within the confines of what he believes is polically feasible and worth the capital at the time. He is an American politician and a decent human being. We may disagree with some of what he believes, but most Americans don’t even understand what he believes. Just the same, he doesn’t seem to believe anything that most of us wouldn’t at least consider reasonable if we at least understood what it was.
Ironically, we just had a president who neither grasped the world aound him nor the consequences of his actions in it. I don’t recall any of the Fox kooks complaining about that.
Bill O’Rielly grasps the world aound him and the consequences of his actions in it. He is also a bright, educated, wise man. He just doesn’t really care. He’s a man for whom money and fame mean far more than the responsibilities of the Fourth Estate. He tries, though, to balance his act by preaching to the choir on things he feels are not that important, and standing up for things he feels are. As strange as it is to say, Bill O’Rielly is probably the most sane and reasonable character on Fox News.
Glenn Beck, on the other hand, is a sleazy idiot. He’s not particularly bright, educated or wise. He’s just a shock-jock who took his shtick from goofball FM antics to rightwingnut AM antics. I seriously doubt he cares at all about the Fourth Estate, nor understands it’s responsibility. He is Charles Coughlin meets Arthur Godfrey meets Howard Stern. To be a fan of Beck’s is to either be a spectator at a car crash or a blind man with a drivers license.
JMJ
“Conservatives should spend 90% of their time talking to the third of Americans in the middle. These re the reasonable people who want to hear both sides, soak up information, and come to an intelligent conclusion. They don’t want anger. They want a train of thought that makes sense so they can say “ok, I’ll buy that argument.”
Sorry, but thats like saying we should let our enemy, the loony viscious 10%, infiltrate and corode everything good about America.
These people need have their “asses kicked” and parade them around wearing them between their shoulders.
The reasonable ones are not who we need to worry about. Yeah, we should engage them in pursuit of happy mediums and answers but these schmucks who run around spewing vile spiteful cral thats never true and cant be proven true are at the heart of whats tearing us apart.
How much longer are we going have to listen to “911 was an inside job”, be called Nazis, or that Bush and 21 other countries manufactured the case for Iraq, with no proof whatsoever ?
Heres the perfect example;
“Either to believe the president is too naive to grasp the world around him and the consequences of his actions or to believe the president represents some cabal bent on the destruction of America is childishly foolish.’
Yet the same people who would grant Obama the ass kissing of his life have not one decent thing to say of Bush.
He may not consciously be bent on any destruction but when ones ego and narcissim is so thick they make decisions such as he has they become a liability no different than a 2 year old behind the wheel.
When image becomes more important than results you’re dangerous.
I dont think hes an evil man, I’m sure whithin his own world he thinks hes doing the right thing.
But the crux of the matter is…, thats his world.
Becks assertions and accusations have yet to be challenged or proved wrong or inaccurate by anyone yet. The few times hes missed he apologized.
” Just the same, he doesn’t seem to believe anything that most of us wouldn’t at least consider reasonable if we at least understood what it was. ‘
Oh puhleeeese !
Every foreign policy he preached during his campaign was so idealistic and naive its only been made obvious by the failures of trying to implement them.
The only foreign or national security policy thats worked since he graced us with his presence has been the drone policies left over from the previous administration.
Gitmo, Afganistan, N. Korea, Iran, Israel etc have all been lacking. Thats putting it nicely.
And dont even try to tell me has any basic math skills
@ Parrot
If you voted for Obama thats label enough for me.
Hell, I’d give my left gonad to have Clinton in office right now.
If a Republican said the same sort of things Obama says, you guys would back him. Oh, wait, that’s right! Reagan said the same things!
I’m sorry, Micky, but all this rightwing handwringing over Obama is just plain ol’ stupidity.
JMJ
“that’s right! Reagan said the same things!”
Back it up. I dont remember Reagan saying half the crap Obama says.
He certainly never said he wanted to know whos a$$ to kick
As Krauthammer pointed out…
“Two years ago next week, he declared that history will mark his ascent to the presidency as the moment when “our planet began to heal” and “the rise of the oceans began to slow.”
Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute, you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.
Read the article, its about as fair as it gets
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2011980260_krauthammer29.html
‘ all this rightwing handwringing over Obama is just plain ol’ stupidity.’
No ones wringing their hands.
Firstly, we dont want anymore attacks on our soil, or dead Americans, we want the gulf cleaned, we wouldnt be getting anywhere if we didnt hold his feet to the fire after him taking 5 weeks to pay attention to this spill. BP is failing.
Its an ample opprtunity to point out failures we dont want repeated.
This guys like Carter on steroids.
just remeber when you accuse us on the right of using this failure of his for politically expedient purposes. Theres just as many whithin his base that are just as frustrated with him.
Its not only us on the right like you posted in your blog that are crying over this.
No one should shut the f*** up in the face of what will destroy the South for decades
Sorry, can’t post again…
JMJ
Nope. Won’t post. I’ll put the response on my blog.
JMJ
“Obama is a bright, educated, wise man who is well-aware of the world around him and fully comprehends the consequences of his actions.”
Hmm, sounds a little Manchurian to me. Put down the Kool-Aid.
“Oh, wait, that’s right! Reagan said the same things!”
Ok JMJ. Provide examples of what and when Regan said the same things.