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| Courtesy of Reuters via Business Insider |
Yes, the President-elect is not only a 2-time winner in these annual mock awards, but he's a repeat winner in this category.
I started this category just a few years back, because I didn't like the false allegations that I was some sort of a GOP partisan hack. Whereas it is true I did switch parties as a young professor who had been a conservative Democrat, that had more to do with my disenchantment with "progressive" Democrats dominating party leadership, less to do with GOP outreach. The GOP was more of a speed bump to economically clueless Democrat statists.
The fact is that I never contributed to the national party, and I had been privately cringing for years, e.g., how the Bush Administration almost doubled the national debt, the response to the economic tsunami, the politically corrupt earmarking, etc. If you look at the early years of the blog, you didn't see me rant against the GOP; in part, this is because I knew however bad the GOP is, I didn't want to give the Dems ammunition; as bad as the GOP is, the Democrats were worse, even more so than when I left the party. I was never happy with the xenophobes but I tried to convince myself that there was a legitimate rule of law concept and wanted to reform the law. I had been attracted to a more libertarian perspective, but I had a Burkean resistance to radical pro-liberty reform. I also felt I would have more influence within the context of a larger party.
There was something Obama's hubris and political opportunism that set me off. Instead of seeking accommodation with a reeling opposition. Obama played hardball forcing an unpopular Senate bill down the House's reluctant throat after Scott Brown's upset win to succeed Ted Kennedy's open Senate seat, which meant the GOP could filibuster a final reconciliation bill. The post-partisan, post-racial America Obama had promised withered away; oh, to be sure, the Dem partisans wanted to point the finger at "obstructionists", even while Obama declared "elections have consequences". I think the hubris really manifested it months before the mid-term election when Dems expressed concerns that the House might go GOP like it did during Clinton's first mid-term; Obama responded something to the effect "I'm not Clinton", i.e., "I'm a better politician." Obama then proceeded to lose the House and two cycles later, the Senate.
Obama's failure went beyond failed partisan leadership. He had paid lip service to the debt ceiling and Bush's deficits; He had criticized our foreign interventions, Bush's record on civil liberties, failed to close Gitmo; the debt is nearly doubled, entitlements are rapidly rushing to a day of reckoning, drone attacks went on steroids; Snowden showed the war on the Fourth Amendment has expanded under the Administration; Gitmo remains open; and Obama, a former Constitutional lecturer, aggressively expanded the Imperial Presidency.
I had high hopes for 2016. I am not going to rehash my critique of Trump in exhaustive detail, but suffice it to say this formerly registered Democrat has said nothing which addresses our deterioration of economic and civil liberty under Obama, no substantive reforms that address the 70% or so and growing of the federal budget constituting entitlements. He rejected decades of past GOP policies favoring a liberalized economy, trade and immigration and introduced a worrisome trend of jawboning companies he disliked for populist/political reasons
He clinched the nomination, and I left the GOP. That by itself is enough to win my mock award. But it was his boorish uncivil behavior that won my utter contempt. This includes, not is not restricted to:
- the frivolous challenge on top GOP challenger Ted Cruz' American citizenship (Cruz was born in Canada, but his mother was a US citizen by birth who had lived in the US more than the required number of years)
- the smear on Cruz' dad, implying a connection to the JFK assassination
- the circulation of an unflattering picture of Cruz' wife compared to Trump's current wife, a former model.
- stonewalling promised releases of his income tax returns
- attack on a federal judge (involving the Trump University case) for his ethnic heritage
- defending the size of his private parts in a GOP Presidential debate
- bringing up his petty feud with actress/comedienne Rosie O'Donnell in both the GOP and Presidential debates
- initially threatening to go after Speaker Paul Ryan's job and/or leadership position when Ryan didn't capitulate as expected to Trump's agenda.
