Obama massages editors, Supreme Court watchers, boasts ‘centrist positions’
Neil Munro
The Daily Caller
4/3/2012
President Barack Obama spent Tuesday working the refs: He firmly nudged news editors and the nine Supreme Court justices toward treating his views as centrist, and seeing Republicans’ platform as “radical.”
“So, as all of you are doing your reporting, I think it is important to remember that the positions I’m taking now on the budget and on a host of other issues, if we had been having this discussion 20 years ago or 15 years ago, would have been considered squarely centrist positions,” Obama told the annual meeting of the American Society of News Editors.
“What’s changed is the center of the Republican Party,” he claimed, shortly before the editors applauded the end of his speech in Washington, D.C…
…The GOP’s plan approved by the House last week, [Obama] insisted, “is really an attempt to impose a radical decision on our country [and] it is thinly veiled ‘social Darwinism.’”
“Social Darwinism” is the term invented by the Catholic Church during the 1930s to stigmatize the policy of eugenics, which sought to improve society by stopping poor people from having children.
Eugenics was initially very popular among elite groups, including university leaders ad progressives, but it fell out of favor after it was embraced by Germany’s national socialist government after 1933…
…“In the months ahead, I will be fighting as hard as I know how for this truer vision of what the United States of America is all about,” he said.
“Absolutely, we have to get serious about the deficit, and that will require tough choices and sacrifices.”
The current budget debate, he urged, “bears on your reporting.”…
The complete article, with video, is at The Daily Caller.
Related: Joe Scarborough: Obama SCOTUS attacks ‘demagoguery,’ ‘disturbing’
Also, Federal judge fires back after Obama health care comments
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals escalated the increasingly public battle between President Barack Obama and the judiciary on Tuesday, ordering the Department of Justice to write and submit a three-page, single-spaced letter by noon on Thursday explaining whether the administration acknowledges that the courts have the right to overturn federal laws.
The order, CBS News reported, follows the president’s historically inaccurate claim Monday that a Supreme Court decision striking down the so-called “individual mandate” in his health care overhaul law “would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically-elected Congress.” Obama suggested that because of this, the Supreme Court would opt not to overturn the law…
Prof. Althouse has more: 5th Circuit reacts to Obama’s remarks on the Supreme Court case and orders response on whether the Administration thinks courts may strike down a federal law.
At The Astute Bloggers, OBAMA CALLS THE HOUSE GOP’S RESPONSIBLE BUDGET WITH LONG OVERDUE SPENDING CUTS “RADICAL”
Update: The Daily Beast: Impeach the Supreme Court Justices If They Overturn Health Care Law. Yeah. Right church, wrong pew.
