Sunday, March 24, 2013

The New Pope Reinforces Obama Doctrine And Politics For The Most Part While Putting The Republicans On Notice To Fundamentally Change Their Policies Or Face Marginalization

By Dr Wumi Akintide

 

The Republicans, much to their own peril, continuously thrash and denigrate President Obama because they are just too dumb to appreciate that God is clearly on the man’s side. The more they try to humiliate the President, the more they rubbish themselves and their future. Like the new Pope President Obama has recorded many a first in his life as a child of Destiny.


  He became the first American President to receive a Nobel Peace award within his very first year in office. He became the first President to sign into Law the first affordable Health Care Reform Law that many of his predecessors in that office have tried to pass but failed. On his very first visit to the State of Israel he has earned the highest honor the country could offer to any one for his leadership and commitment to Israel while at the same time speaking the truth to power in Israel and Palestine like no other President before him.


I will be the first to admit that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are both good at blackmailing each other for political advantage. They both have a history of misleading the nation for their own comfort but the Republicans are particularly good at it if you remember how they tried to impeach Bill Clinton who has now turned out in retrospect to be one of the greatest and smartest Presidents of the 21st century, given his track record in office. If the man is allowed by the Constitution to run for office a third time, he would win. He is looming larger than life everyday as Americans look back on his time in office and what he was up against. Like Obama and the new Pope Bill Clinton was in office to make a difference and he did without any question.


The same Republican Party that had led America and arguably the whole world to a very costly but needless war in Iraq based on cheap propaganda and false pretenses are again pressurizing Obama to intervene in Syria. They forget that it is easier to start a war than to end it. If America must learn the right lessons from this cold truth, they would have realized by now that the Republicans have been doing their worse to rubbish Obama despite his performance in office. I take off my hat for American voters for rejecting McCain or Romney both of whom would surely have led America to another  war because of their  conviction that America has to remain the police man of the world, even if it means fighting a dumb war that has a potential to ruin the American economy while sending American soldiers to die for nothing. With close to 4,500 American soldiers lost in Iraq, more than 108,000 Iraqis dead and 2.2 trillion Dollars squandered. It was time for America to put the Republicans on notice to desist from their war mongering inclinations and leave Obama alone.


If the Republicans have been following Obama’s rise to power as carefully as many of us do, they would have realized by now that they are fighting God like I said before. That is why they are jumping from frying pan to fire, so to speak, in all of their calculated efforts to  rubbish Obama as illegitimate and undeserving of the highest office in the country because he is black.  Obama was so underrated and written off as a fluke in American Politics who would fade away or just unravel within his first 2 years in office. Some of the Republicans led by their ranking member in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell actually predicted his highest priority was to make Obama a one term President. He forgot that man proposes but God disposes Mitch could end up becoming the ultimate victim of his own prediction when he gets deflated, humiliated and defeated in the next election. 

The Republicans have learnt nothing from their losses in 2 consecutive presidential elections and they totally misunderstand their slight majority in the lower House in 2011 as a mandate. Their draconian approach to building Rome in a day was rejected by the voters who chose Obama’s more gradual and balanced approach to solving the problems of America because the nation cannot stand still.
The Republicans have fumbled by believing they could paralyze Obama’s presidency by just saying no to everything Obama supports even when it is far superior to their own position.  It has become their past time to continuously and relentlessly block Obama using their small majority in the lower House of Congress even though they lost the popular vote by over a million votes to the Democrats in the last congressional election. 

Their flawed candidate, Mitt Romney had lost to Obama by several millions of votes in the popular vote and by what I call a landslide in the Electoral College computation despite all of the efforts made by some Republican Governors in states like Florida and Wisconsin to suppress and subvert Democracy by making it that much harder for Blacks, Hispanics and Latinos to vote. Obama’s margin of victory in that election would have been predictably higher, If the Republicans had maintained a level playing field.


Mitt Romney was so naïve to believe he was going to win because he was counting on false and self-serving opinions polls put out by their evil genius named Karl Rove and Dick Morris to give the Republicans and Mr. Romney a false sense of victory on the night of the elections. They got Donald Trump who has become the butt of every joke across to start fooling himself by questioning the legitimacy of Obama as President and by claiming Obama was not born in America. 

It was disingenuous of Donald Trump, a filthy rich half illiterate to start suggesting to anyone who will listen that Obama gained admission to Columbia and Harvard by default. He deliberately chose to overlook the fact that Obama’s father was a Ph.D holder in Economics from Harvard while his mother had a Ph.D in Anthropology. Obama himself was the first black President of the reputable Harvard Review and he got married to Michelle one of the smartest first ladies who is also a product of Princeton and Harvard.


We told the Republicans they were going to lose the last election but they dismissed our predictions with the wave of the hands believing that monetary advantage was going to put Obama and the Democrats at a huge disadvantage when the rubber meets the road but they miscalculated very badly as Obama succeeded in raising more money from individual donations across the country to remain competitive with Romney. The Republicans got everything wrong in their preparations for that election and their analysis of what went wrong and how those mistakes could be corrected before the next mid- term election. They recently organized a C-PAC summit to do an autopsy of their mistakes. 

 One can tell from most of their guest speakers at that gathering and what they all said that the party is still out of touch and pretty much in total disarray. Their failure to invite the great Governor of New Jersey clearly tells me they are deceiving themselves.
They totally forgot that America of today is totally different from the America they thought they knew. The Republicans are still on the wrong side of all the issues that would determine the outcome of future elections nation-wide and more so in states in the South which used to be the exclusive preserve of the Republicans in years gone by. The demographics have totally changed turning the minorities into the silent majority. 


The Republican party has become the proverbial Tower of Babel where the builders were so confused that they totally misunderstood themselves and public sentiments of the great majority of voters in America.  With some help from the Democrats, the Republicans have boxed them into a corner projecting themselves as advocates for the filthy- rich and the well-to-do in America. It is a stigma they cannot easily shake regardless of how much they try. Their claim to helping the poor, the elderly and the underprivileged and the middle class in the American society clearly sound hollow when you break down the Ryan budget they have endorsed, and how it plans to cut off all the safety-net programs for the poor in America.


Their ultimate goal to repeal the affordable health care reform Law speaks volumes on how much they really care about the poor in America. Their reluctance to reform the gun control laws and their support for the NRA position on that law has totally exposed their hypocrisy and their refusal to recognize the civil rights of gays and lesbians may have put them on the opposite side to the hope and aspirations of the new Pope whose position is far much closer to the position canvassed by President Obama for the most part.


The most stunning development I wish to underscore in this article is the unfolding gravitas of Obama as he continues to make history in America.  His endorsement as a strong leader by the most credible Republican Governor in the country following Obama’s masterful handling of Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath has put the Republicans in a double bind. I am talking of Chris Christie of New Jersey. It was an endorsement that totally debunked the projection by the Republicans that Obama was a weak leader and the development seems to have provided  a contrast in the minds of voters across the board on the stark differences between Obama and George Bush in the way and manner the two leaders responded to crisis and emergencies such as Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.


The new Pope’s position on the poor in the society and his definition of justice and fair play around the world has more or less amplified or reinforced the Obama doctrine in a way that should give the Republicans a pause as they try to rebrand their party and whitewash their lousy image and central message. The recent trip of Obama to Israel has finally put to rest the indictment by the Republicans that Obama was not a dependable friend of Israel. 


Natanyahu, in a final press conference with President Obama following the state visit, had very nice things to say about Obama declaring his confidence in the President and describing his support for Israel as rock-solid and second to none.
Even though the new Pope and Obama may not agree on everything, I strongly believe they are natural allies in their central message and quest for justice and peace around the world.
    I rest my case.

 

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