Think Progress criticized conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh today for saying he hopes “Obama fails.” Although some may call Limbaugh’s words un-PC, he is exactly right.
He is a conservative, and a hardliner at that. He cannot possibly hope that now President Barack Obama will be successful. If Obama is successful, many policies will be implemented opposed by conservatives and he will be reelected four years from now while conservatives want to take back the White House.
It is politically correct for a conservative to say he hopes Obama will do well, but that doesn’t make it true nor reasonable. Conservatives who want Obama to succeed aren’t conservatives; conservatives disagree with Obama on too many issues to wish him well politically.
Of course, that does not mean that conservatives can’t wish Obama well in his private life. They can, and most will. They may pray for his health and that of his family members; but they can’t pray for Obama to succeed in his plans for America.
If that’s politically incorrect, so be it. It is honest and reasonable; that’s far more important than pleasing the PC elite whose view on political correctness is that one celebrates everything liberals (and some moderates) do and attacks and insults conservatives.
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
Comments are closed.
PoliGazette Comments Policy
PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree.
Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate
these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors.
Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue
publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.
(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly
or blatantly misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that
respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should
not be posted.
(2) Comments should avoid vulgarity as well as racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual bigotry.
(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional
reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.
(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not
include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement
the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.
(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements.
Comments that present objectively false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim") or
that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat
slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.
Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors
by email only.
I’ve been on the left since the sixties and like most of my liberal friends I am also more interested in honesty than being politically correct. Your observation works for everyone under any president. Frankly I don’t know why a staunch conservative would say much positive about President Obama unless they’re thin skinned and can’t take public disagreement. Most of the liberals I know don’t care as much about what people say, i.e. being politically correct, as they do about what really happens in the society, the workplace, the environment, etc. Law and action are far more important than off handed comments. Being PC really applies to a few very vocal people.
Way too many conservatives have a knee jerk description of liberals in they’re mind that doesn’t fit into reality, just like too many liberals have narrow views of typical conservatives. And both sides too often confuse party affiliation with liberal or conservative views.
As long as our views are expressed in a civilized manner it’s healthy for a free society to understand differing views. If Limbaugh cheers on people that would harm the President that’s a completely different story.
I actually just want America to be better off in four years than it is today. I don’t think Obama has the right ideas to pull it off. I worry about what he wants to “Change.” But I do hope for all of us that he’ll do some good.
Limbaugh’s statement indicates that he is more interested in the game of politics than the purpose of the game, which is to successfully govern the country. While I believe that conservative principles are far better than liberal ones and that Republicans represent conservative principles better than Democrats, I still want the country to move forward economically under Obama. Thinking otherwise is like gouging one’s own eye out because you don’t like what it sees.
Marc: but that’s not what’s going on here, not in general terms at least. If Obama would somehow improve the American economy (in the long term) dramatically, that would be awesome. Trouble is that as a fiscal conservative I believe his policies will not do so; rather, it may make the economy artificial as it was before the recession but then for different reasons. In other words, ’success’ for Obama means implementing policies that, as I see it, may ‘help’ the economy in the short term but will harm it in the long run because it will once again be artificial growth. The only way for this to be different is, as I see it, for Obama to change his mind on a wide range of issues related to the economy. Assuming he won’t change his mind and views dramatically in the coming four years, ’success’ for him does not mean ’success’ for everyone else.
Understand? Following your reasoning I should say “well, I hope that in some miraculous way, Obama’s policies have a different effect than they have historically had and that they will, this time, encourage long term growth and prosperity.”
Saying that it’s merely defying PC to wish the president failure ignores the glaring, obvious fact that the success of a nation and the success of a president are very closely tied. By saying that you want a president to fail, you are in essence wishing the nation ill, because a failed presidency hurts a country rather badly. That means that you’d rather see the country suffer than see the advancement of policies you disagree with. It’s heartless and selfish, not merely “defying the PC elite”.
I can understand conservatives not wanting to see policy implemented that they are contrary to, but hoping that that policy fails to the detriment of the nation in order to prove your point that it’s bad policy is astounding in its cynicism. But then, it is Limbaugh we are talking about, after all. I’m a lefty for most things, but I’d rather see a conservative policy work than be proved right.
Marc: I think you don’t understand (neither do you Claudia). The only way for, in my opinion, Obama to be successful is for him to become a fiscal conservative all of a sudden or that some miracle will take place that will cause old, tried, big-government policies that have only created artificial growth in the past to somehow, someway result in a different thing now.
In other words; Obama’s fiscal policies, for instance, will, as I see it, only cause artificial short term growth but they will hurt the economy in the long run because they will, as said, be artificial.
Success, then, is not a possibility if you are a conservative; if you are a fiscal conservative you have studied this subject and come to the conclusion that the policies Obama wants to pursue are firstly not sustainable and, secondly, not desirable.
So no, a conservative cannot ‘hope’ Obama will be successful except for… “succeeding at changing his mind.”
I know what you mean, Michael, and normally I’d agree- but right now I feel like the conservative/liberal definitions are pretty meaningless anyway. I don’t think anyone really knows what will turn the economy around, and I think it is going to take a pragmatic approach rather than an ideological one. So in that sense, I can’t join Limbaugh in wishing that Obama fails to achieve his agenda but instead have to hope that his agenda is based on sound advice. Obviously I still care about growth of government and huge deficit spending, and I hope he’s serious about cutting wasteful spending even as he also increases spending on infrastructure and energy R&D.
I guess where I’d probably agree with Limbaugh would be to hope that he doesn’t have some initial ’success’ with policies that are (in my view) pretty reasonable in the current economic climate as I’ve described above, and then use that success as a mandate to usher in more and more government spending. I would definitely add my voice to the many conservatives who would then oppose him- but currently, since his agenda appears to be quite a bit different from his campaign rhetoric due to the economic meltdown, I’m finding less to get worked up about and I’m more in agreement with Velda in saying that I’ll be happy with anything that will prevent an even harder fall than we’ve already experienced (without of course leading to a crash down the road either.)
Exactly, C Stanley! I’m liking the way you put things.
I don’t want any down-the-road crashes either of course. And I don’t want a big fat government that ineffectively tries to soak up responsibility for the poor choices of its citizens. I think that’s where Obama was planning to take things, but now that we’re already in the mire manufactured by just such policies, I hope he’ll see the error of those ways and turn things around.
Yes, I’m doubtful, but what else can we do but watch him like a hawk, work with our representatives to keep him in check, stay informed, use our voice, and hope for the best? Wishing he’ll fail ‘just to prove a point’ isn’t helpful. Although I don’t think that’s what Michael intended at all, it could well have been what Rush meant since it’s kind of his job to keep people riled up.
I understand what Rush is saying, but I just can’t see it that way. Most people here have already said it, but now is not the time for ideology in areas like the economic crisis.
What I’m not sure Rush understands (or is just not saying here) is that there’s a time for politics and then there’s a time for making things work. With the economic crisis I don’t care if the working solution is conservative or liberal, there just needs to be a solution.
But, for other things (abortion, etc, etc), there is plenty of time for hoping certain policies fail. Those things are not immediate like an economic crisis is.
“I can understand conservatives not wanting to see policy implemented that they are contrary to, but hoping that that policy fails to the detriment of the nation in order to prove your point that it’s bad policy is astounding in its cynicism.”
Fill in “conservatives” with “Liberals” and you have the Bush years..
I agree with C Stanley on this. Though it is contrary to my conservative gut and personal experience in my day to day life, we are in uncharted territory as far as the economy is concerned, I don’t think anyone really knows what will turn the economy around, and I think it is going to take a pragmatic approach rather than an ideological one. That being said, including conservative principles as real options is also necessary for a truly pragmatic approach.
I think the only reason it might be reasonably to hope that Obama’s policies fail is if you believe that liberalism will be bad for the U.S. over the long term, but perhaps might yield some perceived benefits over the short term. With that view, it seems reasonable to hope that his policies will fail sooner rather than later so that we can come up with better policies to replace them before they do too much damage.
From the opposite political point of view, an example might be the deregulation of the financial industry over the past several decades, which at first seemed to be beneficial and only recently appears to have been a mistake. If you have that point of view, it would have been better for those policies to have failed a long time ago so that we could have replaced them with something better before they caused such a crisis.
But I have no idea if this is what Rush had in mind (I’m guessing he was thinking more along the lines of “what can I say that will get people talking about me?”).
How well did they wish Bush in 2000? They just whined that he didn’t ACTUALLY win…
You don’t have to unite behind Obama. In fact, you should be skeptical, skepticism and criticism keeps presidents doing their job right. Even ones for Bush…
You gotta know that a fully united country, politically, is not a democracy. A united country, united with the people and the defense of the nation, is a powerful country.
I agree with your first paragraph Mike,and third.
I’d carry Michael’s thought even further though, to beyond just economically, but socially as well. There are enough European nations out there to easily tell that going that direction does not benefit in the long run.
For my personal short run, the Bush years were very, very good to me. I’m going to buy a house that’s being foreclosed on and lock in a nice low interest rate. Because I know, it’s going to be a very short time until that’s made much harder by a left exec & legislative branch.
Michael, I understand that for Rush it’s about promoting an ideology as much or more than it is about the health of a nation. He’s not the only one doing it; any casual observer of the media knows that there are many liberal cheerleaders who care even less about the harm their agenda items do when enacted.
Obama may well fail, just as he failed to get my vote. But tuning out the talking heads and focusing on the issues at hand would be a good thing for the country. Truth matters more than ideology and we watch carefully to see that Obama pursues it. To the extent he does he should be respected, just as he should be called to account for pursuing a destructive liberal agenda.
Limbaugh has a financial stake in Obama’s failure. Maybe he’s more interested in his shows ratings than the state of American politics.
I think that for Limbaugh, it’s a combination of publicity/ratings as well as his personal convictions in purity of ideology. He’s of the ilk who believes that Republicans shouldn’t be moderate because any adaptation to liberalism will fail in his opinion, and then the GOP takes the blame (this was why he was anti-Democrat but not pro-McCain.) To some extent I see that point but I also see the harm of resisting moderation, compromise, and pragmatism.
I agree with C Stanley.
Though I will say this… Don’t EVER, link to Think Progress again, that site is just … lies lies lies…
Any other site, even DailyKos is fine.
However, I think a country should criticize it’s president, no matter what time it is. It’s part of democracy and keeping the president doing his/her job.
Marc; yes, but then it’s an issue of “define success.” What does “success” mean in this context? Does it mean a health America, prosperous, stronger than ever before or does it mean Obama being able to implement all his long cherished liberal policies (which hurt the U.S. in the long run)? To me, “success” for Obama doesn’t mean the first as much as the second; a ’successful’ president is generally someone who succeeds in getting his favored legislation passed. The other, the first, success; we can all agree that we hope that this is how it will be – but looking at his domestic policies, I don’t see that happening.
That’s right, Michael, about ‘defining success’. I got into a discussion of that point at TMV yesterday too- someone commented that ’success’ in this case clearly means that Obama’s policies would succeed in bettering our country, and I strongly disagreed- in fact I think it was pretty clear that that’s not how Limbaugh was defining it.
And if there’s any doubt, here’s an excerpt from Sean Hannity interviewing Limbaugh where he makes it crystal clear:
“Now, success can be defined two ways. I said earlier, I don’t know about this guy, I really don’t. But I’ve got my suspicions and they’re pretty close to convictions, but we’re gonna have to wait to see what he does. Now if he turns out to be a Reagan — if he adds Reagan to his recipe of FDR and Lincoln, and if he does cut some taxes, if he does not eliminate the Bush tax cuts, I would call that success. So yeah, I would hope he would succeed if he acts like Reagan.
But if he’s gonna do FDR, if he’s gonna do the New New Deal all over, which we will call here the Raw Deal, why would I want him to succeed? Look, he’s my president. The fact that he is historic is irrelevant to me now. That matters not at all. If he is going to enact a far-left agenda — look, I think it’s already decided. Two trillion dollars in stimulus. The growth of government.
I think the intent here is to create as many dependent Americans as possible, looking to government as their hope and salvation. If he gets nationalized health care, I mean, it’s over. We’re never going to roll that back. That’s the end of America as we have known it. Because that’s then going to set the stage for everything being government owned, operated or provided.
Why would I want that to succeed? I don’t believe in that. I know that’s not how this country is going to be great in the future, it’s not what made this country great. So I shamelessly say no, I want him to fail if his agenda is a far-left collectivism, some people say socialism. As a conservative, heartfelt, why would I want socialism to succeed?”
So I agree with you on that part- and as I said previously, in ordinary times I’d agree with Limbaugh on this too. But I just don’t think the answer to our current situation is going to be pure conservatism and will have to include some policy which would be considered more left leaning or collectivist. It’s a situation where individuals can’t be allowed to bear the full brunt of the consequences of their decisions because it will now be so widespread that everyone will be adversely affected (eg, if thousands more mortgages go into default then housing prices will continue to decline and credit will be tight even for those who’ve managed their finances responsibly, and if millions lose their jobs then there’s a ripple effect to the economy when so many people have to consume less and demand for products and services drops so that even well managed companies will suffer the consequences.)
So again, it’s just not about conservatism vs. liberalism anymore, although I do agree that conservatives should be vigilant against attempts by the left to usher in sweeping socialistic programs under the guise of addressing our immediate crisis. I’m concerned, for instance, about the fact that under Obama’s tax proposals, we’ll go from an already ridiculous 30% to over 50% of the population not paying any income tax at all. That’s an example of a policy which I hope he’ll fail to implement, though I’m not optimistic that that’ll be the case.
I think that there is general agreement among serious people that there are at least two possible meanings for the words “success” and “failure” in this context — there is (1) success/failure in getting policies enacted and there is (2) success/failure in improving the state of the nation.
I doubt that anyone seriously believes that Limbaugh meant #2 when he wished for Obama’s failure. Those that claim that Limbaugh meant #2 only do so because they hate Limbaugh as a person and seek to twist his meaning to make him look bad. Trying to convince such people to change their tune is basically asking them to stop willfully lying — it is unlikely to produce anything other than intensification of their poseur-ness.
Unfortunately, pretending to be outraged at anything and everything that those on the other side do/say has become a commonplace in the blogosphere.
Jason, for the most part I agree, but I have to say that Limbaugh leaves himself open to interpretation far too often, and I would say on purpose in order to generate this kind of controversy. If I believed that Limbaugh was always sincere in the things that he says, I would agree that we should all give him the benefit of the doubt. I’m not a regular Rush listener, but I do catch some pieces now and then, and it seems to me that he purposely says things that can be interpreted as extremely off-base, but which are also vague enough for him to cover himself by saying “that’s not what I meant” after the fact. I believe he does this on purpose for publicity, so as long as he’s getting the publicity he wants, I say he deserves whatever criticism he gets with it.
And I say this as someone who is mostly conservative and sometimes agree with him on the issues, but dislike his over-the-top rhetoric.
Mike: I mostly agree with you but I wouldn’t say that Rush’s choice of rhetoric means that he’s not sincere. I think it’s both reflective of his sincere beliefs as well as an attempt to create controversy.
I’ve heard him say, and I definitely think he believes this, that there’s no such thing as compromise but instead you have to decimate your opponents. That attitude permeates most of his rhetoric- he never gives an inch to his ideological opponents and seeks to defeat them through a positive presentation of his own views and ridicule of theirs. I don’t think that kind of attitude is productive, but it’s really the mirror image of those on the left who not only won’t admit that Bush did anything right but also have to ascribe malicious intent to his actions (eg, the case for war in Iraq based on WMD was not just a faulty decision, but a lie, and the real reasons for the war included greedy conquest and settling a personal family vendetta against Saddam.) While some of those lefties make those charges disingenuously to get attention, many of them actually do think that Bush is evil and mentally challenged. The fact that they use that kind of rhetoric doesn’t mean that they’re not sincere- it’s a choice of how to go about arguing one’s views, to either persuade or to conquer.
C Stanley,
I see your point. Perhaps sincere was not the right word, but what I was trying to convey is that I believe he often chooses words that are the most inflammatory, rather than choosing words that most accurately describe is view. That is all I meant by saying that he isn’t being sincere. I was not implying that he doesn’t actually believe what he says.