It appears the Republican National Committee has recognized the “expiration date” phenomenon:
With Republican voters in Iowa set to finally begin picking a nominee to challenge President Obama, GOP officials in Washington are quietly and methodically finishing what operatives are calling “the book” — 500 pages of Obama quotes and video links that will form the backbone of the party’s attack strategy against the president leading up to Election Day 2012.
The document, portions of which were reviewed by The Washington Post, lays out how GOP officials plan to use Obama’s words and voice as they build an argument for his defeat: that he made specific promises and entered office with lofty expectations and has failed to deliver on both.
Republican officials say they will leverage the party’s newly catalogued video library containing every publicly available utterance from Obama since his 2008 campaign. Television and Internet ads will juxtapose specific Obama promises of job gains, homeowner assistance, help for people in poverty, lower health insurance premiums and stricter White House ethics standards against government data and news clippings that paint a different reality
I put together some lengthy lists of “expired” Obama promises; after a while I stopped keeping track because I thought it was well-established and recognized, far and wide, that President Obama isn’t good at keeping his promises.
Since then, there have been some new additions to the list.
Under U.S. law, such slaughter processing for human consumption requires federal inspections. In 2006 under the Bush administration such inspections were de-funded, causing the de facto end to such U.S. activities.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, animal anti-cruelty activists sought then Sen. Barack Obama’s support for “a permanent ban on horse slaughter and exports of horses for human consumption.”
They were delighted to get an unequivocal “Yes” from the non-pet owner.
But that was then. This is now. Last month slipped into the Agriculture Department spending bill in the Republican House was a continuation of the inspection defunding. The Democratic Senate version wanted the horsemeat industry kick-started again.
In the conference committee, the Senate version won by a nose. And Obama quietly signed the death warrant legislation on Nov. 18. He was abroad again at the time. So the White House used a robot pen.
ELIMINATING DUMB RULES:
August 23, 2011: “The White House Said It Sought to Eliminate ‘Dumb’ Rules . . .” (Laura Meckler, “White House to Scale Back Regulations on Businesses,” The Wall Street Journal, 8/23/11)
August 25, 2011: “U.S. employers must post notices informing workers about their legal rights to form a union and bargain on contracts, the National Labor Relations Board said in a rule that may help efforts to organize employees.”
There are those who will wonder what the purpose of keeping a promise to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012 . . . and then leaving the 15,000 embassy staffers to be protected by 5,000 security contractors who will carry assault weapons and fly armed helicopters. Orders to return fire will come from . . . U.S. diplomatic personnel.
Perhaps laying all of this out will help ensure an early expiration date for the Obama presidency.