Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
There are those who have nightmares about Barack Obama. He was not, they suspect, born in the United States. He was not and could never be eligible to be elected President of the United States, and behind his candidacy lay a great conspiracy to impose upon an unwitting populace the agent of a foreign power profoundly hostile to our country.
I am not in their number. I admit to lunacy, but my fantasies run in another direction. Every once in a while I lie awake – or am I then awake? I know not – pinching myself (or so I think).
“Could it be true?” I ask myself. “Has everything that we have seen in the course of the last twenty-seven months been engineered by the supreme Machiavel of our age – that evil genius Karl Rove? Did he “discover,” in the manner of a Hollywood agent, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid? Were they found at a drugstore soda fountain? Or did he find them at Central Casting? Stranger things have happened. After all, it was Pat Sajak who “discovered” Keith Olbermann and sent him on to infamy.
“Wanted,” Rove must have thought, “the Keystone Politicos – a gang supremely capable of winning an election but utterly incapable of shooting straight once in office. Let’s start with an American half African caught up in a Third-World ideology invented in the 1950s and long out of fashion, vain beyond belief, obsessed with the notion that he is a world-historical figure, hostile to compromise, contemptuous of his compatriots, apt to think disgraceful conduct on the part of one or more of his own supporters provides him with ‘a teachable moment’ in which he can hector his fellow citizens, and so persuaded that as an orator he has ‘a gift’ that he supposes that, if he delivers three hundred speeches a year, people will bow down, strew myrtle at his feet, and chant, ‘Hosanna in excelsis.’ Then, we will need a lady legislator willing to advocate passing a bill so that we can see what is in it, and a half-senile clown from a state where the prostitutes greatly outnumber the preachers, a man who owes everything to the gambling industry.” “Wanted,” he must have thought, “an opportunity to impose this gang on the opposition and ruin them for a generation or more!”
I know, I know. It is madness! But ask yourself whether what everyone now takes to be true about what has happened in this country is not even stranger than my lunatic hypothesis. In 2006, you might have imagined that the Democrats would sweep in 2008. Many of us feared as much. But, if someone had also told you that, after the election, they would pass a series of bills without a shred of Republican support, bills thousands of pages in length that no one had bothered to read and that no one understood – well, what would you have said?
Consider the evidence! Just when Dennis Hastert and the Republicans in Congress had demonstrated that the Democrats were not the only corrupt, patronage-oriented party in Washington, just when you think that it really is over for the Republicans, along comes Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid to remind the American people just how bad it can get and to treat the opposition with so much disdain that the Republicans in Congress begin to grow backbones.
And how can you explain Wisconsin? In November, 2010 – when the Republics won both state houses and the governorship in that state, would you have predicted that the Democratic Senators in that state would charter a bus to flee to the People’s Republic of Illinois in order to shirk their responsibilities, paralyze legislative activity, and leer at the waitresses at Rockford’s Tilted Kilt? Did you foresee that thousands of teachers, who make on average a hundred grand a year, would call in sick and then descend on at the capitol in Madison carrying signs denouncing the state’s newly elected governor as a Mubarak and a Hitler for having the effrontery to think that he and the Republicans swept into office with him should enact the platform on which they campaigned? Would you have imagined that Barack Obama would then wade in, announcing his support for public-sector workers, making twice what ordinary Cheeseheads make, who think it unthinkable that they should be called upon to do what private-sector workers customarily do: contribute to their pension funds and help pay for the healthcare insurance from which they benefit? Had I predicted any of this, you would have thought me daft. You would have said, “Come on! The Dems may be corrupt, but they are not stupid!”
So, I suggest that this must all be the result of machinations on the part of Karl Rove. Rush Limbaugh failed with Operation Chaos, but Karl has succeeded with Operation Annihilation. Think about it. After the events of this week, what are the chances that Barack Obama will take Wisconsin in the general election scheduled to be held a bit more than eighteen months from now? What, do you think, is going to happen in Ohio and Michigan in the next couple of months? And what will be the consequences?
Ok, ok! I confess that this is all madness. Karl Rove did not dream this up. He is a bright enough fellow, but this is clearly beyond even an evil genius. But, ask yourself this: How else can you explain the self-destructive conduct of the Democrats over the last twenty-seven months? Do you think that someone has been putting LSD in their food? And what are they going to do next?
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Comments :
Jul '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
The "Axis of Taxes" (Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid) have awakened a sleeping Giant.
Jul '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Let me ask you this: if you could outlaw public-sector unions tomorrow, would you?
Even if it was massively unpopular?
That's a game changer, but so is Obamacare.
That made my evening.
Jun '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
You forgot Joe Biden, America's own Bonnie Prince Charlie. He seems to think the country loves him as much as he loves himself.
Sep '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
After all, it was Pat Sajak who “discovered” Keith Olbermann and sent him on to infamy.
Who has been mysteriously quiet as of late on Ricochet. The fiendish cunning.
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
I commend you, Dr. Rahe, for sketching out the beginnings of what would make for a wickedly genius movie script.
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Perhaps Rob Long could finish the job.
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Paul, while it's always an honor to be mentioned in your pieces, could you please go easy on the "discovery" tidbit lest it eventually make its way into my obituary?
Sep '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
This post combined with that Double Secret Probation Tartan post are convincing me that Dr Rahe may be able to add screenwriter to his cv some day.
Jun '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
What will the Democrats come up with next?
Probably...the "Great Leap Forward?"
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Pat Sajak
Paul, while it's always an honor to be mentioned in your pieces, could you please go easy on the "discovery" tidbit lest it eventually make its way into my obituary? · Feb 19 at 6:40pm
Mum's the word.
May '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Prof. Rahe, you make me sound loonier than I am--unless by "foreign power" you refer to those "powers and principalities" mentioned in Philippians?
Nov '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Everything you say makes perfect sense, no madness there. Well, except that Rush Limbaugh’s operation chaos was not a failure. It was, in fact, pretty successful. At least in its stated objective to keep Hillary in the race as long as possible on the theory that she would bring out a lot of what you just said about Obama. She did some of that, the only problem is that even though she knew all of that she didn’t think it was anything she could use against Obama. It all seemed so reasonable to her.
Dec '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Paul, your timeline is off. What's eminently plausible is that Rove, having seen the Democrat sweep in 2006 and predicting that the American people would give Pelosi and Reid a Democrat President, engineered Obama's candidacy to make sure the Democrat President would be someone who'd let Pelosi and Reid do every crazy thing they ever wanted to do - thus making plain to the voters who and what the Progressive Democrats really are.
Oct '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
etoiledunord: What will the Democrats come up with next?
Probably...the "Great Leap Forward?" · Feb 19 at 6:51pm
Their zombie army is already deployed and awaiting instruction.
Jul '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Wow, Paul, you could write for one of those slicks that do the conspiracy theory stuff if there was one for conservatives.
These guys really, really thought that American would love them for "fixing" health care, even as they plugged in stupid traps they intended to use later to "rescue" us with a single-payer, immune sovereign solution with those premium death panelist positions for friends and family.
Back in the Clinton days they did a game called SimHealth where nothing worked for more than five years, but only single-payer would get you out that far. The assumptions were pure BS and the point of the game was clearly to sell socialist health care. When it got out that their scheme was a giant wealth transfer from poor youth just getting established to mostly wealthy elderly with many times the disposable income, the Clinton's folded like a cheap tent. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi devils triangle figured that after another 16 years of grade inflation and self esteeming the young would be defenseless.
Oct '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
As Paul Ryan recently said, "You can't make this stuff up". What is most heartening is the adults in the electorate are paying attention and beginning to take charge. The left really has no defense to intelligent opposition.
Jan '11
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
Quite an amusing scenario, but for an academic, predictably passive.
Let me know when the indictments against the union leadership start and the recall petitions against the absent Democrat state senators begin.
Let me know when Republicans look Democrats in the eye and say, "You're damn right this is meant to break the political power of the unions - Do you really think you can slap our faces without consequences forever?"
Elect no Democrat anywhere, ever.
Dec '10
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
I’m sorry Professor, but these fantasies seem as unlikely as my fantasies involving Sharon Stone.
Re: Is Barack Obama Karl Rove’s Manchurian Candidate?
In other words, only slightly improbable?