Ken Blackwell - Columnist for the New York Sun
It's an amazing time to be alive in America . We're in
a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman
candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate
who is the first front-running freedom fighter over 70. The next
president of America will be a first.
We won't truly be in an election of firsts, however, until
we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won't arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender. Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.
The reality is this: Though the Democrats will not have a
nominee until August, unless Hillary Clinton drops out, Mr. Obama is now the frontrunner, and its time America takes a closer and deeper look at him. Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He's not. He's the next George McGovern. And it's time people learned the facts.
Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most
liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted
Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton. Never in my life have I
seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from
his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost.
George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.
Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he's not
behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he
were in a beauty pageant.. Mr. Obama talks about getting past party,
getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America . But
let's look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this
superficial 'beauty.'
Start with national security, since the president's most
important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists - something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s.
Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.
Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on 'the rich.' How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.
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