Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Is Obama a Closet Friedmanite?

The left thinks so, and is very worried about it. Apparently they think Obama breathed the ambient air too deeply at the faculty lounge during his time at the University of Chicago Law School. One can only hope. . .

UPDATE: Maybe we really should be playing this to the paranoia of the left. So I think I’ll start rubbing my hands together and saying, "Ah--it’s all going according to plan!" After all, wasn’t Obama growing up in Indonesia at about the same time the CIA was carrying off coups, etc, in that region? With apologies to Manchuria, he’s the Indonesian Candidate! Rove’s mind-control ray is working to perfection! Memo to Karl: "What are we going to do now that they’re on to us. They weren’t supposed to find out until after the election."

Discussions - 7 Comments

Obama's own words from the beginning of Klein's article say plenty. Speaks volumes about the alignment of the political spectrum and how "political correctness" ought to be more accurately defined. The guy who is regularly (and inaccurately) referred to as "the most liberal" member of the Senate swoons over The Market in a way that actually reads disturbingly like a Dubya quote sans the faux-cowboy twang: "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."

The Right probably does have much less to fear from an Obama victory than the Left does from a McSame victory. So you guys should just relax, prop your feet up and have another cigar.

I see that you don't deal with people that are from West Texas.

Maybe you are the one that is fake.

Also, did you read the article or at least got through the first few parts?

It is dripping with sarcasm and cynicism of how Obama is truly just a opportunistic politician.

Disparage the competition's association with Walmart, but appoint someone as head of his economic team who champions Walmart as soon as the competition is gone?

Come on!

The key questions are 1. What does Obama understand by the free market? Many Democrats say they like markets, but they are, in fact, in favor of heavy regulation.

And 2. How will he actually govern? The Democratic party seems to have moved Left on things economic in the past several years. If they hold strong majories in Congress, what policies will they support? To what degree might they be able to force the hand of the president?

And one additional point. Free trade was one of the defining, if not the defining issue for the Democratic party from the Age of Jackson through the New Deal, and well into the 1960s and 1970s and beyond. Clinton was in that tradition.

One further point. To many on the Left, the Nation is the definition of the Center, and the New Republc (and the New York Times for that matter) is the Right. National Review is off the charts from this perspective.

That idea might go back to the 1930s, when being on the "Right" meant "to the Right of the party line."

From this perspective, Left and Right are not defined by the general political spectrum, as seen in the U.S. population at large.

Just as he has apparently resumed smoking, Obama will show he has imbibed more from Sunstein, Nussbaum, ad nauseum than from Friedman, Epstein, et al.

George Anastaplo once asserted that Chicago represented a sort of mean between the extremes of the coasts (in the context of a different argument). I don't think that argument holds here either.

Steve, I think the likelihood of your hypotheses is about equal in each case. Meaning: nil. 1: Craig, the right probably has much less to fear than the left in this election? Oh, that's rich. So funny it hurts.

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