Everybody loved this guy when he was criticizing Bush. He was the talk of the town and the man of the hour. But now that he's criticizing President Obama (even going as far as to say that Obama has been worse than Bush and the type of President that "Richard Nixon could only dream about"), not quite so much (The Daily Kos, in particular has blasted the guy - no surprise there). Which leads me to believe here that a lot of the criticism that in fact was leveled at Bush wasn't so much based on what the fellow was doing but more so on the fact that it wasn't
THEIR fellow who was doing the shit.......Kudos to Jonathan Turley - not just a principled liberal but a principled human being.
ReplyDeleteWill,does it surprise you the left throws Turley under the bus?
My god it was a mortal sin...he said something negative about the chosen one.
Eight years ago he was a daily guest on MSNBC.Now he couldn't get through the front door.
Principled is something severely lacking in politics and academia. Unless of course principled is understood to mean sticking with and advocating partisan ideology no matter how misguided or wrong it may be.
ReplyDeleteCertainly there are ample examples of this on both sides,
What we have is liberal Johnathan Turley pointing out why Obama is not a liberal, but a blue dog Democrat.
ReplyDeleteNo, not really surprised, Russ (the Daily Kos being especially predictable here).............Good points, Les, and I guess that the distinction here is between being principled and dogmatic.
ReplyDeleteJerry, I believe that Turley's problems with Obama aren't so much with where he stands on the political spectrum and much more with his abuses of power; his war on whistle-blowers, his war on the press, his war on medical marijuana, the abuses of the NSA under the man, the fact that he has essentially been legislating from the White House, the fact that he's been dropping bombs in going on 5 countries now, the fact that the man has a kill list, etc..
ReplyDeleteWill,
ReplyDeleteYou mean that those items you list are not on the political spectrum?
I don't know, Jerry, I think that executive abuses of power have pretty much cut across the political divide in America; from Harding, Bush 2 and Nixon to Wilson, FDR, and Obama, and if there is a continuum related to it, it's probably more psychological than ideological.
ReplyDeleteExactly, Will. Also, Obama was never near the Blue Dog group, (left of center, while conservative relative to other Dems) which was actually small and didn't last long.
DeleteThe blue dog movement anyway is part of liberalism....it's just closer to the center than to the very far left.
ReplyDeleteIf executive orders are a benchmark of abuse of power then Obama is a real piker He is at the bottom for presidents.
ReplyDeleteCheck out the link over at the Swash Zone. Captain Fogg did a well researched piece on this. A real eye opener for some.