From the Thursday Morning Jolt:
Obama Makes His Anti-Trump Pitch… to Conservatives and Republicans
The two most extraordinary sections of President Obama’s convention speech last night:
Look, we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward.
But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican – and it sure wasn’t conservative.
Every other Democrat in the country is pulling out all the stops to tie every Republican on the ballot in 2016 to Donald Trump and his toxic favorable/unfavorable numbers, and along comes the President of the United States, the preeminent foe of the conservative movement and GOP for the past eight years, to say, “look, he doesn’t really speak for them.”
The second amazing part:
Our power comes from those immortal declarations first put to paper right here in Philadelphia all those years ago; We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that together, We, the People, can form a more perfect union.
The Obama version skips over a few words; the actual Declaration of Independence declares, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But the point is that the Democrats – the Democrats! – are citing the Founding Fathers and the document of our national creation in their argument. This used to be the Republicans’ style. By leaving it unused, the Democrats are picking it up and using it.
The most insufferable assertion from Obama’s speech came from the preceding sentences:
Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order. We don’t look to be ruled.
Oh, really, Mr. “I have a phone and a pen”? Careful, years of Obama-messiah talk from his true believers are being sent to the memory hole.
You would have hoped that the experience of Obama would shake Americans of the bad habit of seeing presidential candidates as national saviors and messiah figures. Nope, we just traded in one for two others. Yes, even Hillary gets the “she inspires all of us” treatment in places like People magazine.
