Matthew Rothschild: Obama Delivers Ideological Knockout to GOP at Press Conference

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Obama Delivers Ideological Knockout to GOP at Press Conference
By Matthew Rothschild, February 10, 2009


This was Barack Obama at his best.

Thoughtful, serious, intelligent, agile, indignant, persuasive.

At his press conference Monday, he shredded Republican arguments against the stimulus package and made the best case by a President in decades for affirmative government intervention in the economy.

“With the private sector so weakened by the recession,” he said, “the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money, which leads to even more layoffs.”

That’s an indisputable fact right now as banks refuse to lend, and one business after another announces massive layoffs.

Obama directly took on free market ideologues who don’t want the government to do anything.

“Doing little or nothing at all will result in even greater deficits, even greater job loss, even greater loss of income, and even greater loss of confidence,” he said.

He noted that almost every economist is backing a major stimulus package, including “economists who were advising John McCain and … George Bush, one and two.”

And, in his strongest round, he pummeled Republicans who characterized some of the stimulus as pork.

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http://www.progressive.org/mag/wx021009.html