For the left-wing media, the period between the devastating electoral defeat the Democrats suffered in November and the end of the lame duck session in Congress this month provided an opportunity for Obama to act “audaciously” and fulfill promises he made to his base as a candidate.
At the same time, the President is thumbing his nose at the segment of America increasingly disillusioned by his agenda and executive overreach. The media fervor celebrates President Obama’s most radical policies—from a lifeline to the communist dictatorship in Cuba, to a unilateral rewriting of immigration laws, to an absurd deal with China, whereby the U.S. commits to severe and specific cutbacks of energy use by 2025, while the Chinese commit to nothing except to consider starting cutbacks in 2030, all in the name of global warming.
“President Obama’s decision on Wednesday to radically shift United States policy toward Cuba is the latest and most striking example of a president unleashed from the hesitancy that characterized much of his first six years in office,” reported The New York Times last week. They did mention his past promise to promote normalization only “if Cuba took steps toward democracy and released all political prisoners.” In fact there have been no such steps taken, and “According to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation,” reported USA Today, “the number of political prisoners detained in Cuba has risen from 2,074 in 2010 to 6,424 in 2013. Through the first 11 months of 2014, that number is at 8,410.” Mark that as yet another broken promise by President Obama in the vein of, “If you like your doctor…”
With the notion that Obama is “unleashed from the hesitancy,” the Times, in essence, dismisses the controversial legacy of President Obama’s far-from-hesitant nor un-noteworthy six years, such as:
the embrace of the race-baiting huckster, Al Sharpton, and the Department of Justice’s “civil rights” investigations in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York;
shutting down the World War II Memorial and national parks;
and more.
Similarly, Politico celebrates “Obama libre:” “If President Barack Obama’s year ended in November, it would have been one of the worst of his presidency,” it reports. “Good thing he had the past five weeks.”
“Obama feels liberated, aides say, and sees the recent flurry of aggressive executive action and deal-making as a pivot for him to spend his final two years in office being more the president he always wanted to be,” writes Politico.
The impression given by both the Times and Politico is that Obama is now unleashed because he doesn’t have to cater to public opinion or worry about upcoming elections. In other words, he is taking all of these actions now that he was previously constrained from doing by political considerations. Not surprisingly, Politico quotes from “a senior Obama aide,” while the Times refers extensively to former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod.
“By framing his moves in generational terms, the president is also seeking to make an implicit case that Republicans who oppose them are dinosaurs fighting yesterday’s battles,” reports the Times. Similarly, using a typical straw man, Politico reports that “Republicans” say “Obama’s liberation…is a combination of delusion and bitter denial that’s just setting him up for a lot of pain once Congress is fully in their hands in two weeks.”
Where is the national dialogue about a president’s duty to reflect the will of the people, or the discussion about whether this unhinged President lost his public mandate after the November elections? No, the perception created by his aides and the liberal media is that President Obama is still going strong. As long as the President pursues a left-wing agenda, these news outlets and others will continue their obvious cheerleading.
