All Mobbed Up

The American Left has been feasting on a serving of crow with sour grapes on the side this week, but this column by Charles Blow deserves some sort of award for offering a glimpse into the mind of a progressive with ashes in his mouth ... mmmmm ... ashes: Mobs Rule

There is a scene in the movie “Gladiator” where two Roman senators are discussing the games that the emperor has revived. One laments: I think the emperor “knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they’ll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they’ll roar. The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the senate. It’s the sand of the coliseum. He’ll bring them death. And they will love him for it.”

That was America during the dawn of W. — too many too easily manipulated. But people grew wiser and restless. And they revolted. As they did, a young crowd-pleaser in Chicago, cloaked in hope, sprang up, won them over and shaped the mob into a movement.

That was then.

Unfortunately, many now see Barack Obama as a left-leaning version of George W. Bush: just another out-of-touch emperor. It seems as if Obama and the Democrats made the mistake of believing that a heart once won was forever won, that people would be patient, and that the mob would accept their reasoning for lack of results.

They were wrong. The mob is fickle. And it’s back with a vengeance.

While the left slept, the right saw a void and leapt in. They feted the fearful to a steady stream of dread and circuses, and now the pendulum of enthusiasm has swung in the other direction.

A mob? Just last year, you liked their votes enough. Anyway, the people in Massachusetts who voted for Scott Brown give every indication of being typical GOP voters: prosperous, upbeat, unpretentious, and relentlessly respectable. In other words, a "mob."

If Blow wants to know why Obama has had such a sudden fall, along with virtually his entire domestic program, he should take a look at what "Jesus Delano Lincoln" has been doing for the past year. For all of his supposed oratorical skills, it's incredible how many times he has acted like an asshole at the exact moment when he was trying to change hearts and minds over the course of the health care debate.

Everyone remembers Joe Wilson's "You Lie!" at the special session, but I still remember that Wilson's shout was preceded by Obama's insulting (without naming, of course) Sarah Palin's Facebook page. I'll bet a lot of other people remember that, too.

Even worse was his gratuitous insulting of the Cambridge Police and Officer Crowley at the end of his last press conference, which was held specifically so Obama could "answer" easy health care questions from the White House press corps. Not only did this gaffe completely distract from the health care debate, it also punctured Obama's image as a post-racial "healer," and revealed him as a dull Leftist worried about "oppression."

And, having campaigned on promises of transparency in the health care debate, Obama enabled a sleazy array of closed door deals that couldn't be called bribes because the taxpayers' money was being passed around in the name of Senate collegiality. Worse, when called on this blatant flip-flop the response was a flippant "Hey, it was campaign rhetoric." Maybe so, but, here's the thing; that was the sort of campaign rhetoric that made people think Obama was "different" (if it makes Blow feel better, I didn't believe Obama's "campaign rhetoric").

Blow does get off one good line, despite himself: "the emperor has no cloture." Hee.