Defeated Obama Rages: 'Memories of These Children Demand' More Power for Democrats
With
the failure of the Democrats’ attempt to exploit the Newtown school
shooting to press forward gun control measures, President Obama took to
the microphones along with the relatives of Sandy Hook victims to
demonize his opposition. This, of course, was his strategy all along:
knowing that he did not have 60 votes in the Democrat-controlled Senate
to pass his gun control legislation, he pressed forward anyway, hoping
to paint Republicans as intransigent, immoral tools of the gun lobby who
don’t care about dead children. After demonizing Republicans, Obama
hopes, he can press Americans into voting Democrats back into power in
the House of Representatives.
On
Wednesday afternoon, Obama played his part to perfection. Mark Barden,
father of a first-grader murdered in Newtown, introduced him. Flanking
Obama were other Newtown victims; Vice President Joe Biden, face creased
in supposed emotional agony, his arm around the mother of a Sandy Hook
victim; and former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who has been one of the
lead advocate for gun control on behalf of the administration.
“On
behalf of the Sandy Hook parents, I would like to thank President Obama
and Vice President Joe Biden,” said Mark Barden, father of a
first-grader murdered in Newtown. “We will not be defeated. We are not
defeated and we will not be defeated ….. I’d like to end by repeating
the words by which the Sandy Hook promise begins: Our hearts are broken.
Our spirit is not.”
He then
introduced President Obama, who blasted away in a carefully calculated
and calibrated assault on gunowners, Republicans, and all those with the
temerity to disagree on his gun control proposals. Lashing out with
more emotion than he has on any issue of his presidency, Obama played up
to the cameras, all the while using gun violence victims as a backdrop.
Obama
said that he had acted in response to the shooting of Congresswoman
Gabby Giffords and Sandy Hook. “Families that had known unspeakable
grief,” Obama said, reached out “to protect the lives of all children ….
A few minutes ago, a minority in the Senate decided it wasn’t worth
it.” Standing on the graves of the children of Sandy Hook has become
rote for this president.
“The
American people are trying to figure out how can something have 90%
support and nothing happen,” Obama raged. “Nobody could honestly claim
that the package [Toomey and Manchin] put together infringed on our
Second Amendment rights …. Their legislation showed respect for
gunowners and it showed respect for the victims of gun violence. And
Gabby Giffords, by the way, is both …. She supports these background
checks.” Actually, opponents of the Toomey-Manchin bill rejected by the
Senate have made their rationales clear repeatedly. It is President
Obama who has failed utterly to provide evidence that would suggest that
the bill would prevent gun violence in any material way. But no matter:
the political show was on.
Obama
launched into an assault on the NRA. “The current leader of the NRA used
to support these background checks …. But instead of supporting this
compromise, the gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.
They claimed that it would claim some sort of Big Brother gun registry,
even though the bill did the opposite. This legislation actually
outlawed any registry … unfortunately, this pattern of spreading
untruths about this legislation served a purpose.”
Obama
then ripped legislators who voted against Toomey-Manchin as tools of the
gun lobby: feckless, spineless, and devoid of all logic. “Most of these
Senators couldn’t offer any good reason why we wouldn’t want to make it
harder for criminals and the mentally ill to buy a gun. There were no
coherent arguments why we wouldn’t do this. It came down to politics …
They started looking for an excuse, any excuse to vote no.”
Obama
continued, “This didn’t make our kids safer. Victory for not doing
something that 90% of Americans, 80% of Republicans, the vast majority
of your constituents wanted to get done? It begs the question: who are
we here to represent?”
Then
Obama turned to his own exploitation of victims of violence using guns.
He defensively set up straw men and then wildly chopped them down. “A
prop, somebody called them. Emotional blackmail, some outlets said. Are
they serious? Do we really think that thousands of families … don’t have
the right to weigh in on this issue? Do we think their emotions, their
loss is not relevant to this debate?” Nobody has argued that victims
don’t have the right to weigh in. But President Obama has used victims
as backdrops, openly stated that those who disagree with him do not care
about victims of gun violence, and put forward victims as the chief
advocates for his policy prescriptions. He has indeed exploited tragedy.
And he would do so here, too.
All of
this was setup for the coup de grace: a request for more power. Because,
after all, Obama was never going to win this debate. He didn’t have the
votes, he didn’t have the evidence, and he didn’t have a decent piece
of legislation to propose. What he did have was unbridled faux moral
indignation and a compliant press.
But he
needs more. He needs a majority in the House. And he asked for it. “So
all in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington. But this
effort is not over,” said Obama. “If this Congress refuses to listen …
the real impact is going to have to come from the voters.”
“The memories of these children demand [gun control],” Obama concluded.
What he
meant was obvious: the memories of dead children in Sandy Hook demands
that voters give Obama more Senators and more Congresspeople. How
convenient for him.
Ben Shapiro is Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013).
