John called it “The Biggest Mistake of Campaign 2012 . . .” and I fully agree. Not only will Obama’s comment be used by every Chamber of Commerce in the country to alert their memberships to just what sort of president they are dealing with, but it has already produced a fair amount of what every politician dreads: ridicule.
There will be a lot more to come.
Take for instance this hilarious Tumblr called “You Didn’t Build That.” (h/t Instapundit)
Wishful thinking. Obama is far too nimble and vigorous a politician to be pinned down by this. You think regular folks want Little Lord Fauntelroy in The White House? Ha, ha. Obama: 56%, an ass-kicking.
Had President Obama simply stated, "You didn't do it alone", he would have expressed a sentiment well within the mainstream of social democratic thought that would have probably caused little controversy and represented a reasonable explication of his administration's positions. n nBut no, he had to go from "you had help" to "it's not really yours", making the leap from social responsibility to outright Marxism. How revealing of the resentments and jealousies that motivate this odd man. n nRomney, for his part, must drop the thesis that Obama is a "nice guy in over his head", and do a better job of pointing out the utter nastiness that underlies many of the methods and policies that Obama and his supporters adopt.
The bizarre but predictable and consistent posture of the Obamazoids on this (and on everything) is that the Rethuglicans are wild-eyed Ayn Rand freaks, who idolize capitalist entrepreneurs as Nitzschean supermen; who don't believe in taxes; and who ascribe zero legitimacy to collectively provided infrastructure or to government services of any kind in any degree. Whether or not they actually believe this is immaterial to their use of that meme towards partisan objectives. That's what has to be stressed by the Romney campaign. n nAlso, the Internet was "invented" –if not by Al Gore– by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) as a system of assured, hyper-resilient, multi-nodal electronic communications within and between DoD agencies and contractors, which would withstand the disruptions of a possible nuclear war. Chance are that nobody was much thinking of an entrepreneurial benefit stream.
A gaff is when a politician tells the truth in public. This was Obama stating his true beliefs. The statement is his justification for redistribution policies. If you didn't build your business then the extent that you benefit is undeserved and unfair. So it is simply fair to take your unjust gains and give them to others.
You’ve gotta hand it to the Progressives, they DID build our Progressive Statist government, and they think they are ordained to “save the planet.” n nIf Napoleon were alive today, it is amusing to contemplate how he would regard Obama. n