Republicans blame Obama for recession; label him a socialist

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President Barack Obama's plans are "one big down payment on a new American socialist experiment," says one top Republican. He's "the world's best salesman of socialism," says another.

"Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff," declares Mike Huckabee, one-time Republican presidential candidate.

Fox News personality Sean Hannity derides his agenda as "socialism you can believe in," while his colleague in cacophonous conservative punditry, Rush Limbaugh, is unapologetic about publicly declaring his desire for Obama to fail: "Why would I want socialism to succeed?"

Less than two months into Obama's presidency, Republicans and their conservative supporters have unsheathed a new weapon in their battle against a commander-in-chief who continues to vex them with strong public approval ratings in the midst of a devastating recession.

They are routinely referring to the global economic downturn as the "Obama recession" while frequently accusing him of being a socialist in his efforts to jump-start the nation's economy.

It's an epithet that has raised the hackles of the president himself.

In an interview last week with the New York Times, Obama was asked if he's a socialist. An apparently incredulous president initially laughed the question off, then called the reporters back after the interview was over.

"It was hard for me to believe that you were entirely serious about that socialist question," Obama told the Times.

"I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn't under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks ... we've actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles, and some of the same folks who are throwing the word socialist around can't say the same."

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, one of the few Republicans in Obama's cabinet, lashed out at the accusations in an interview with the Huffington Post this week.

If anyone's to blame for the current recession, LaHood said, it's the previous occupant of the White House, George W. Bush.

"This is not an Obama recession," LaHood said. "He inherited all of this. He inherited a US$1 trillion dollar debt. He inherited the recession. He inherited the lousy stock market. All of this was inherited."

In fact, said LaHood, the president has been hard at work trying to repair the damage done by his Republican predecessors whose refusal to regulate the country's financial institutions, in particular, contributed mightily to the recession.

"The guy has been in office a little over a month and what he has tried to do is listen to every economist he could listen to. And he put in place some opportunities to get people to work quickly through the transportation bill portion of it, to help the banks, and to help the real estate industry. And it is going to take time."

Nonetheless, Republicans are showing no signs of letting up, taking to the airwaves to press their case that Obama is leading the country down a dangerously socialist path of big government control.

Mike Pence, a Republican congressman from Indiana, had this to say this week about Obama's budget: "You look what he has in mind for health care, you look at what he has in mind in terms of an enormous increase in taxes on virtually every American, energy taxes on every homeowner and renter, a micro-management of our economy in so many different ways."

"As much as the president might bristle about the term ... it's really hard to argue that this isn't a fundamental transformation of our economy to look more like European-style socialism," Pence concluded.

If so, it's a brand of socialism Americans are behind.

Countless public opinion polls suggest that the majority of Americans support both additional stimulus spending as well as government intervention to save insolvent banks.

Even the socialists are scoffing at the suggestion that Obama's a socialist.

"Expanding welfare? Only a traitorous Red could be in favour of such a measure as unemployment soars to its highest level since 1982," reads a sarcastic editorial in the Socialist Worker published Wednesday.

"A government-led expansion of health care? Every patriotic American knows that if 50 million people in the U.S. lack health insurance, it's because they don't appreciate how the free-market system works."

Obama, in fact, is in danger of not going far enough to pull the economy out of its freefall, the publication argued.

"With the government's own statistics showing the economy lurching deeper into crisis by the week, the question isn't whether Obama is too radical, but not radical enough."
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http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/090311/world/obama_s_word
 
Old news. They've been calling the President names since during the campaign.
 
Mike Pence makes me ashamed to be a Hoosier. He's becoming a huge attention whore lately, and it's no secret he has aspirations to be President, the way he's become the new hero of the Republican Party.

Every time I see him on the local news or hear him on the radio running his mouth I seriously want to punch him. His ego is out of control.
 
When I see this topic and "Mike Huckabee" and "Sean Hannity" in the first three paragraphs, it's instant tl;dr.
 
lawlz, they also called him a Terrorist... I guess they changed their mind when that became unpopular.
 
Hasn't this been going on since BEFORE he got elected? I'd be willing to bet most of those Republicans calling him a socialist are just bitter that McCain didn't win the election.
 
This has been going on since the fall. Obama of course didn't cause the recession. The recession had been going on for more than a year before he took office. The Republicans don't want to admit they caused it.

They're are already people who believe Obama WILL fail and are awaiting the Republican resurgence.
 
What I hate is that the Republicans fail to mention that they were the cause of the recession in the first place. It may take some radical measures to stabilize the economy. But hey, I'm fine with it as long as the economy returns to normal. I think people are slowly beginning to realize that this will take a while and are beginning to except it. Well, anyone who isn't a full-fledged Republican.
 
You're right. The depression was starting long before the Obama administration. But it had yet to reach the lows it had until long after.
Now I'm not calling Bush the next Hoover, (I've even heard some people compare him to Harding) but I'm not saying this isn't his fault either.
 
I'm wondering how many people actually know what "socialist" actually means. By that I mean, besides the Godwin's Law-esque implications.
 
MetaRobo said:
I'm wondering how many people actually know what "socialist" actually means. By that I mean, besides the Godwin's Law-esque implications.
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I doubt very many. I've said it before and I'll say it again; there's nothing wrong with some facets of socialism. I quite like my free healthcare.
 
Valdez said:
I doubt very many. I've said it before and I'll say it again; there's nothing wrong with some facets of socialism. I quite like my free healthcare.
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"Free" is a stretch--you're taxed to pay for it.

Even if America "went socialist," we can't just make healthcare out of nothing. You have to have some federal-level taxation to compensate for the massive spending...and I'm someone in favor of an American national-based health system.
 
I hate to be dissappointed of most news coming from the Obama administration. It's been past 50 days since he took office and he's been given "failing grades" along with Timothy Geithner, the secretary of the Treasury. I think it has to do with this bipartisanship. Obama is in a predicament. Siding with all the Democrats is a bad thing because it's breaking up the bipartisanship. But siding with Republicans contradicts everything you aspired to do during the campaign. I think drastic measures need to be taken to lift us out of this mess. Pleasing your opponents is not what you want to do. They shouldn't control your policies, you should. And for the sake of government, do not create enemies in your own party. This will be a disaster in the long run if it continues.
 
evkl said:
"Free" is a stretch--you're taxed to pay for it.
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It is true that "free" is just a label and we are taxed for it, but I'd much rather get a cast on my broken leg with few worries rather then have to declare bankruptcy because of it.
 
Isn't it a laugh that this whole thing started during the Bush administration, and although Obama has tried to stop it, he's not strong enough without the support of the stubborn Republicans, and therefore the whole recession has snowballed?

You can't give a guy a 1000Ib block of metal and stand back and watch him try to hold it up and then bitch when he doesn't. You try to help him.
 
Fox and the far right Retardicans are just trying to rip this country apart.

And Palin says they're "real Americans". Fuck them.
 
Can't anyone ever take the high road, and when someone is blamed for recession, they don't just blame back? Maybe, just MAYBE, this whole thing is not the sole responsibility of Bush, or Obama, or the Democrats, or the Republicans, but something actually more complicated than politics? Economics do not fall neatly into the political divisions our society creates. The minute we stop blaming the "retardicans" or the "socialists," we can start actually looking at the real problem, because I guarantee you neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are going away in the next 4-8 years. Yelling at each other won't fix anything.

Honestly, grow up people, and stop trying to play your little schoolyard politics and think about the issues rather than whose fault it is, or why 40% of the country is stupid for not joining your 40%.
 
I don't think Obama's been in office long enough to cause any problems. He's only been in office for about two months or so. In my dad's case, anyway, he's just upset and complains about Obama because McCain didn't win the election. Don't know if that's the case with most people saying bad things about him. And no matter how many socialist ideas he might have, I don't think he could succeed in turning this place into a socialist state. Most of the problems are still there from the last president.
 
I knew it. I knew the whole obama thing was too good to be true. If the republicans dont help him he gets the country into more debt. Thus the republibastards say he no fit and call for re elections and then mcain goes into office. Then america can finally call bankruptcy.
 
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