Obama: Republicans who want the government to act competently on the oil spill are hypocrites, so they can be ignored

Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying “do something” are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much. Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.

Obama said that, and it makes the usually affable columnist Arnold Ahlert turn white-hot in fury:

Mr. Obama, whether you realize it or not, there is nothing remotely inconsistent in folks wanting the government to “do something” about a massive oil spill, even as they don’t want that same government insinuating itself at an ever-increasing levels into their personal lives.

Your comment indicates that, at least for you, government is an all or nothing affair, as in “don’t expect us to clean up an oil spill, if we can’t nationalize GM, health insurance or the nation’s energy sector.”…

Perhaps the most disturbing part of your above statement is the fact that, in the end, it’s once again all about you…. It is a whine borne of arrogance, the idea that anyone who criticizes you only does so because they don’t have the intellectual capacity to appreciate your superior abilities. It is the insouciant dismissal of their concerns because, as the above statement so amply implies, you consider them hypocritical for wanting government to “do something.”

By the way, Ahlert in this column answers the question that occupied us at VFR a while back: he says that Obama is both a radical leftist and an empty suit.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 21, 2010 12:47 PM | Send