Bill O'Olberman
Active Member
Whats going to backfire is the rights attempt to squash everything Obama and the Dems do. And so is this attempt at fear mongering and painting Obama as something he is not. Look at the last election and you will see its futility. Palin/McCain went on a smear and fear campaign and Obama talked issues and what happened? THE REPUBLICANS GOT SLAUGHTERED!! out of office and out of a majority now it is a power struggle to get control back but instead of coming up with genuine ideas to compete with the dems its more of the same....fear...smear and be the party of no!
Obama has done some fear mongering himself.
-- During Obama's Feb. 18 address on the mortgage crisis, he said that we were in a crisis 24 times, Frequently describing in apocalyptic terms that the crisis would drag down the entire economy.
--During Obama's first and only national press conference he talked about us being in a crisis 12 timesand noted that it was an "unprecedented crisis" -- something sure to instill confidence.
-- In his first radio address to the nation on Jan. 24, Obama claimed, "We begin this year and this Administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action."
-- It is even harder to make sense of Lawrence Summers' recent statement, because of these grossly exaggerated claims he made on stage with Obama in November -- saying again"we've had an unprecedented crisis."
-- On Nov. 16, Obama said: "We've got an unprecedented crisis, or at least something that we have not seen since the Great Depression."
It isn't just these statements. In each of the three presidential debates last September and October, Obama claimed that we were in the "worst financial crisis since the Great Depression." It was a constant theme of his campaign and he has made it again and again since the election.
In fact, since the election, he went from claiming that it is the worst crisis since the Great Depression to very frequently claim that it is the worst crisis ever. Before the election he claimed that it was the "worst financial crisis" and now he usually says that it is simply an "unprecedented crisis" -- implying that there has been no worst crisis of any type.
"Never allow a crisis to go to waste," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election. "They are opportunities to do big things." Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience at the European Parliament, "Never waste a good crisis." Then President Obama explained in his Saturday radio and Internet address that there is "great opportunity in the midst of" the "great crisis" befalling America.
Was he supposed to say that the economy was all rosy flowers, unicorns, magical dancing fairies, and all was well?
The truth is that the credit crisis, consumer confidence being shit, real estate values droping substancially, high unemployment, etc it is undeniable that we have faced and are still facing poor economic conditions and at one point the possibility of Great Depression like conditions were possible. I say its fair to say that this has been the worst economic downturn for a generation.