Obasms and the Obama Threat Matrix

As a counterpart to the term Rush Limbaugh coined eons ago, "Gorbasm", let me coin the term "Obasm", as that expression of adulation the Obamedia and the liberal global elites express over Obama's every word and deed. An example is this Canadian columnist saying in the wake of the election: "Proud to be American once again ... Americans are about to get their country back, and so am I."

Obama makes the liberal MSM swoon precisely because he is simpatico to every instinct of the liberal intelligensia, not just in the US, but in Europe as well. Harvard Law equals "smart" to them, being multiculturally progressives equals "worldly", and managing to be a black man who conveys tele-prompted platitudes of 60s liberalism equals "statesman".

Now that Obama has made some actual governing moves, his administration, still a vague and fuzzy future, is starting to take shape. The appointment of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State will confirm it. Obama's Clinton-retread appointments, and his mix of 'moderates' (i.e., what the media calls moderates but who are liberals who are not ideological hard leftists) and more liberal members is signalling a more conventional administration that some of the progressives might have hoped for. Obama has time and time again now, starting with his VP and the selection committee, gone with DC insiders, Democrat heavy hitters (Clinton, Richardson), and bureaucrats steeped in Government. For good or ill, this will make his administration more partisan (no Republicans thus far), conventionally experienced, and less "change"-like than his campaign conveyed. Meet the new boss, not much different from the Bush-Clinton-Bush era old boss, and with many of the same players intact.

Yet for conservatives, that only amplifies the threat, because in fact the serious left-liberal advances in the Clinton administration was in the quiet destruction of good administrative policy and its replacement with encroaching liberalism. Obama will seem to be restraining the left, but in fact he will be merely throttling it to enable a sustainable pace of advance, like a governor on a steam engine.

I have used the phrase "Obama threat matrix" as a shorthand for the specific actions the Obama administration and Democrat Congress would take to advance left-liberalism. In fact, the "Obama threat matrix" is precisely the threat of mainstream liberalism. It is precisely what make the liberal intelligensia swoon that makes me concerned. The focus of this "Obama threat matrix" will be the legislation that comes up in the Democratic Congress: CO2 regulation, ending the union secret ballot, amnesty for illegal aliens, higher taxes, budget busting stimulus spending bondoggles, etc.