Things are finally getting interesting in the 2012 Presidential Election. GOP nod-apparent Mitt “Money” Romney seems to have caught Incumbent POTUS Barack “It’s Bush’s Fault” Obama in a Really Stupid Quote. At the Roanoke Fire Station #1 in Virginia last Friday, President Obama delivered a speech on the campaign and the economy that Romney has turned into what looks like an effective campaign commercial. Naturally, Obama is now saying that Romney twisted his meaning, so it seems like a good idea to go to the source.
The following quotes come from the official White House transcript of the speech, and cover the speech in its main points and focus.
The speech is a little over five thousand words, and took 42 minutes to deliver. So from the start it appears that this is not an off-the-cuff unscripted moment, but a deliberate statement. With that in mind, here is the structure of the speech.
“Hello, Roanoke! It is good to be back in Roanoke! Good to be back in Virginia. Back in the Star City.”
The President began by greeting the city and mentioning key friends and supporters, including Governor Warner, Mayor Bowers, and a couple candidates running for office.
President Obama then began to discuss the campaign:
“Now, let me just say, unless you have managed to break your television set you’re probably aware that it is campaign season. And I know it’s not always pretty to watch. We’re seeing more money flooding into the system than ever before, more negative ads, more cynicism. A lot of the reporting is just about who’s up and who’s down in the polls instead of talking about the things that matter in your day-to-day life.”
This part amazed me, given that Obama has refused to be open about his record as President. Especially concerning the Economy, and Unemployment in particular. I mention it here because for President Obama to say this and not get jeered off the stage shows the event was attended by supporters in the form of a pep rally rather than a candid discussion of the issues. This helps to explain Obama’s later blunders; he was riding on the support of people who did not represent the national perspective.
Obama then went on, as many presidential candidates do, to describe the next election as historically important, in order to energize his base:
“In some ways, the stakes are even bigger now than they were in 2008, because what’s at stake is not just two people or two political parties. What’s at stake is a decision between two fundamentally different views about where we take the country right now.”
Obama went on to describe memories of life in Illinois, praising the help he saw people get from government programs, like the GI Bill and FHA loans. How single moms could get grants and scholarships, which would allow them to “go as far as their dreams could take them.”
This is important, because it shows President Obama laying the framework for the theme that people succeed because of government assistance. That if you work hard and the government helps, then you can “be part of a community and give something back.”
The theme is established in the first few minutes, that Americans owe their government for making success possible.
Obama then went on to do what he always does; blame the Bush Administration. Particularly amusing to me was Obama’s claim that in 2008, “job growth was the most sluggish it had been in 50 years. There was a sense that those who were in charge didn’t feel responsible.”
He failed, of course, to mention that the unemployment rate became a problem only after Democrats took over Congress in 2007, or that the lowest unemployment rate by month in his Presidency remains higher than any month during Bush’s two terms. But blaming others rather than face his own record is classic Obama by now.
Obama then went on to promise that he really will work on jobs this time:
“Our goal isn’t just to put people back to work — although that’s priority number one — it is to build an economy where that work pays off. An economy where everyone, whether you are starting a business or punching a clock, can see your hard work and responsibility rewarded. That’s what this campaign’s about, Roanoke. And that’s why I’m running for a second term as President of the United States of America.”
Obama then lied about Republicans and how the economy works:
“They think that the economy grows from the top down. So their basic theory is, if wealthy investors are doing well then everybody does well. So if we spend trillions of dollars on more tax cuts mostly for the wealthy, that that’s somehow going to create jobs, even if we have to pay for it by gutting education and gutting job-training programs and gutting transportation projects, and maybe even seeing middle-class folks have a higher tax burden.
“So that’s part number one, right. More tax cuts for those at the top.
“Part number two is they believe if you tear down all the regulations that we’ve put in place — for example, on Wall Street banks or on insurance companies or on credit card companies or on polluters — that somehow the economy is going to do much, much better. So those are their two theories. They’ve got the tax cuts for the high end, and they’ve got rollback regulation.”
If anyone still thinks Barack Obama is an honest man, that quote above should set you straight.
Obama then went back to blaming Bush for the horrid unemployment condition under his watch:
“We tried their theory for almost 10 years, and here’s what it got us: We got the slowest job growth in decades. We got deficits as far as the eye can see. Your incomes and your wages didn’t go up.”
Obama also blamed Republicans for the end of the Bush tax cuts, and lied as usual about the deficit:
“If you continue their tax breaks, that costs a trillion dollars. And since we’re trying to bring down our deficit and our debt, if we spend a trillion dollars on tax cuts for them, we’re going to have to find that trillion dollars someplace else. That means we’re going to have to maybe make student loans more expensive for students. Or we might have to cut back on the services we’re providing our brave veterans when they come home.
“Or we might have to stop investing in basic science and research that keeps us as a leading-edge economy. Or, as they suggested, maybe you would have to turn Medicare into a voucher program.”
The proper phrase for that behavior is ‘scare tactics’. And let’s just point out what the deficit has done since this gentleman took office. We have a debt crisis because of Obama, not in spite of his efforts.
Obama whined about the possibility that Obamacare might be repealed: “they voted for the 33rd time to try to repeal a health care bill we passed two years ago, after the Supreme Court said it’s constitutional and we are going to go ahead and implement that law.” Note also how much respect Mister Obama has for the Congress of the United States.
Obama then delivered some lies about Romney:
“This is just a small example of the difference between myself and Mr. Romney”
Since Governor Romney was not in Congress nor in the White House during the time up to now, this statement is a lie on its face, but Obama had more:
“When the auto industry was about to go under, a million jobs lost, and my opponent said, “let’s let Detroit go bankrupt,”
Governor Romney played no role in the GM bankruptcy, and Obama is lying to categorize GM as the whole industry. Obama went on:
“My opponent, he invested in companies who are called “pioneers” of outsourcing. I don’t believe in outsourcing — I believe in insourcing. I want to stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas; let’s give tax breaks to companies that are investing right here in Roanoke, right here in the United States of America. Let’s invest in American workers so they can make products and ship them around the world with those three proud words: Made in America.”
First, President Obama has made his own profits from investments, so he knows full well his characterization of Romney’s investments is a lie. Also, not many Democrats would like the public to consider what has really happened to American jobs since 2008. And the job losses and stagnant wages were the result of Obama’s policies and inaction, not anything Romney did by investing his money into companies.
Obama then showed how little he understands the Economy:
“So what I want to do is, I want to let every single person refinance their homes and save about $3,000 a year because you’ll spend that $3,000 on some of these stores right here in downtown. You’ll help small businesses and large businesses grow because they’ll have more customers. It will be good for you and it will be good for the economy. And that’s why I’m running for a second term as President — because I want to help America’s homeowners.”
Only a complete moron or genuinely dishonest person could make such a claim. First, banks won’t loan money these days at good rates unless you are making it worth their while. Second, refinancing is only an option for people whose credit and job condition are already healthy, and third, the people who are able to refinance their mortgages in this way will not be going on shopping sprees, they will pay down their own debt or try to cut their costs. Only people like Obama could actually think this proposal is anything like a real solution to the current mess.
Obama was not done with his dishonesty, though:
“We passed that health care law because it was the right thing to do. And because we did, 30 million people who don’t have health insurance are going to get help getting health insurance. Six million young people who didn’t have health insurance can now stay on their parent’s plan and get health insurance.“
Obama talks like this was a free gift from the government, rather than forcing people to buy something they might otherwise choose not to buy.
But, Obama being Obama, he has more lies to tell:
“Now, one last thing — one of the biggest differences is how we pay down our debt and our deficit. My opponent, Mr. Romney’s plan is he wants to cut taxes another $5 trillion on top of the Bush tax cuts.”
That’s a lie, and there’s no way to pretend anything else about that. Scare tactics, class hatred, and dishonesty. Obama in his element. And so he continued:
“The only way you can pay for that — if you’re actually saying you’re bringing down the deficit — is to cut transportation, cut education, cut basic research, voucherize Medicare, and you’re still going to end up having to raise taxes on middle-class families to pay for this $5 trillion tax cut. That’s not a deficit reduction plan. That’s a deficit expansion plan.”
Considering what Obama has already done to the deficit, when ‘Chutzpah’ is not enough, folks will now have to use ‘Obama’ to describe extreme arrogance and dishonesty,
But there’s more:
“We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts.”
To be blunt, no you have not.
“But you know what, I’m not going to see us gut the investments that grow our economy to give tax breaks to me or Mr. Romney or folks who don’t need them. So I’m going to reduce the deficit in a balanced way. We’ve already made a trillion dollars’ worth of cuts. We can make another trillion or trillion-two, and what we then do is ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more. And, by the way, we’ve tried that before — a guy named Bill Clinton did it. We created 23 million new jobs, turned a deficit into a surplus, and rich people did just fine. We created a lot of millionaires.”
100% false, except that I do believe a number of people in government have helped their friends get rich through government programs.
And now, the meat of the meal:
“There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
“If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
“The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
“So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.”
And there it is. Obama definitely said it, just the Romney quoted him, and only now does the President – slowly – begin to realize he was confirming to the nation how much he does not understand about the people, the nation, and our character. A man devoted to government control and collective authority, Barack Obama is without question bad for the economy, bad for America, and should be sent home next January.
The real Barack Obama spoke last Friday. And he is a bitter, shallow man.
