Purple Promises: There's virtually nothing in Mr. Obama's platform that diverges from the standard,

[rodeodance]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010403414_pf.html
Purple Promises
Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama both say they can bring red and blue states together. But how?

Saturday, January 5, 2008; A16

UNDERSTANDABLY, much has been made of the Iowa caucus results as a reflection of voters' desire for change. Both winners, Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama, took on their parties' establishments, and both promise a new era in Washington. But the two share something else as well: a commitment, at least in rhetoric, to transcend partisanship and unite Republicans and Democrats. What's less evident is the basis for those claims.

Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, noted in his victory speech Thursday night that voters weren't opting for just any change. What voters seek, he said, is to "bring this country back together, to make Americans, once again, more proud to be Americans than just to be Democrats or Republicans." Similarly, Mr. Obama, the freshman senator from Illinois, told his supporters that "you came together as Democrats, Republicans and independents, to stand up and say that we are one nation . . . we are not a collection of red states and blue states."

For both candidates, personality is an important component of the bipartisan appeal. Mr. Huckabee's genial, self-deprecating humor, offering a contrast to the post-Sept. 11 sternness of the Cheney-Giuliani variety, could appeal to many independents. Mr. Obama to an even greater degree offers himself -- his life story, his Kansan mother and Kenyan father, his ability to lift up and inspire -- as a unifying force. In his breathtakingly eloquent victory speech Thursday, Mr. Obama said Iowa would be remembered as "the moment when we tore down barriers that have divided us for too long, when we rallied people of all parties and ages to a common cause."

But what cause, precisely? There's virtually nothing in Mr. Obama's platform that diverges from the standard, left-wing Democratic fare. He promised again Thursday not to "just tell you what you want to hear, but what you need to know." But virtually nothing he says is dissonant to liberal ears; in foreign policy, trade policy, education policy, fiscal policy, there is nothing with a nod to the possibility of good ideas in the red-state playbook.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. Obama will buckle under the least pressure if he's even elected.

He's too weak. I see him as floating in the air... not intense, not vicious enough to fight the powers-that-be.

[aquart]

2. Oh, as to vicious...

I wouldn't bank on that. If we're to judge by his supporters, there's plenty of vicious there.

[msongs]

4. sssh, don't dare criticize the messianic cult... or else :-) nt

[Sarah Ibarruri]

5. There's plenty of viciousness. Republicans willl eat him alive and spit him out.

My #1 concern is not allowing another Repugnican in the White House. I don't know if I can trust Obama to keep them out of the WH.

[patrice]

6. Nuclear power money behind Obama will block Alternative Energy development.

And if investigations yeild prosecutable * offenses, in defense of The Constitution, an O administration will blow it off the same way and for the same reasons that Kerry blew off Ohio.

[sandnsea]

3. People aren't religious zealots

They are more liberal at heart, when they're approached in a fair-minded and respectful manner.

[Demeter]

7. This Is an Amazingly Stupid Article from the Wash Post

I should HOPE that a Democratic candidate was offering a "standard, left-wing Democratic fare" and that "virtually nothing he says is dissonant to liberal ears; in foreign policy, trade policy, education policy, fiscal policy, there is nothing with a nod to the possibility of good ideas in the red-state playbook".


We've had SEVEN YEARS of the Red State Playbook and the consensus is there ISN'T any good idea in it! Even the GOP, in a whisper and only to itself, admits it.