Friday, June 15, 2012

Liberal Illusions about Barack Obama


Ron Radosh


Writing in the current issue of The New Yorker, political reporter Ryan Lizza asks the question of what Barack Obama would do if he is re-elected? In his article, “The Second Term,” Lizza proceeds to reveal all the illusions which he and his fellow left-liberals living in Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Brooklyn’s Park Slope all share.

It is a given to Lizza that Obama will have that chance, and his answer to the question is based on the argument that once he gets reelected, Obama will prove to his fellow Americans and the world that he will become the great President that Lizza and his associates all know he was meant to be.

Most conservative political commentators argue that if Obama does succeed in getting re-elected, what we will see is a conscious turn to the political Left. As a President who no longer has to worry about another term in office, Obama will use his Executive powers to put into effect what he failed to do in his first term but which he had promised in 2008, a “fundamental transformation” in the direction America is to take. That means, conservatives argue, serious steps to move the United States in the direction of a European style social-democratic cradle to grave welfare state.

Read it all here.

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