Fake Progressive #563,822

Fake Progressive #563,822
Posted by Thomas Woods on July 2, 2011 10:30 AM

It's Michelle Goldberg of The Daily Beast, who says Obama's "greatest fault in office has been a misplaced faith in the GOP's capacity for reasonableness." (I leave aside any critique of the substance of her article, where she claims that nearly all "serious" economists say we need tax increases and spending cuts, as if this were primarily an economic rather than a moral question; whether we "need" tax increases is based on whether we believe in expropriation of peaceful people, whether we believe in the immoral uses in which the confiscated funds will be employed, whether we believe the innocent can be held liable for debts racked up by sociopaths without their consent, etc.)

Anthony Gregory recently noted that Obama just might be guilty of worse offenses than having "a misplaced faith in the GOP's capacity for reasonableness." These offenses, you might think, would be abhorrent to "progressives." And maybe they are, to the 37 progressives with actual principles. Michelle Goldberg, who thinks the key divide in the country is between Democrats and Republicans, is still plenty enamored of what she creepily calls "our president." It's worth recalling Anthony's indictment, an indictment that anyone on the Left with a shred of principle would be repeating every day, but about which we hear not one syllable from Michelle Goldberg:

He shoveled money toward corporate America, banks and car manufacturers. He championed the bailouts of the same Wall Street firms his very partisans blamed for the financial collapse. He picked the CEO of General Electric to oversee the unemployment problem. He appointed corporate state regulars for every major role in financial central planning. After guaranteeing a new era of transparency, he conducted all his regulatory business behind a shroud of unprecedented secrecy. He planned his health care scheme, the crown jewel of his domestic agenda, in league with the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

He continued the war in Iraq, even extending Bush's schedule with a goal of staying longer than the last administration planned. He tripled the U.S. presence in Afghanistan then took over two years to announce the eventual drawdown to bring it back to only double the Bush presence. He widened the war in Pakistan, launching drone attacks at a dizzying pace. He started a war on false pretenses with Libya, shifting the goal posts and doing it all without Congressional approval. He bombed Yemen and lied about it.

He enthusiastically signed on to warrantless wiretapping, renditioning, the Patriot Act, prison abuse, detention without trial, violations of habeas corpus, and disgustingly invasive airport security measures. He deported immigrants more than Bush did. He increased funding for the drug war in Mexico. He invoked the Espionage Act more than all previous presidents combined, tortured a whistleblower, and claimed the right to unilaterally kill any U.S. citizen on Earth without even a nod from Congress or a shrug from the courts.

None of this, evidently, is worse than having "a misplaced faith in the GOP's capacity for reasonableness."