Democrats pretending to move towards middle

This was the same thought that I was having. Obama makes himself look moderate by attacking the left when there is actually no policy change on his part. Indeed, Obama wanted the public option in health care, but the problem wasn't him, but that they couldn't get all the Democrats to sign on. On the issue of small business, they want to give out loans at the same time that they are raising taxes. If you want help, small firms have to go hat in hand and beg for money, money that will be doled out on criteria that the government sets (e.g., affirmative action).

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, known for his smoothness and precision, seems to have erred egregiously twice in just weeks.

First, he speculated on TV that Democrats might lose the House, an inexcusable blunder because it is his job to omit the truth — not lie, just omit the truth — when the truth hurts. Then, there he was in print this week, deriding “professional liberals” who label President Barack Obama too moderate, saying they need “to be drug tested.”

Gibbs should have expected this would enrage liberals. Maybe that’s just what he planned.

Facing reporters Wednesday, Gibbs neither apologized nor backtracked. Instead, he doubled down. He was angry at the liberal TV pundits who bash the president, Gibbs said, standing by his words. Then he said he wasn’t the only one at the White House that felt this.

If Gibbs is purposely picking fights with the left, it’s not too surprising. In fact it’s consistent with the White House effort to position Obama closer to the center — where he traditionally needs to be for a reelection victory in 2012.

That’s where former President Bill Clinton went after the voters threw the congressional Democrats out of power in 1994. He won reelection by a comfortable margin.

Now Obama, excoriated by conservatives as a free spender who wants to socialize medicine and coddle U.S. adversaries, is starting to remake his image in the same fashion.
In the last few weeks, for example, he has presented himself as the relentless advocate of small business — long a GOP bastion, given its abhorrence of taxes and regulation. The small-business trade group, the National Federation of Independent Business, is about as Republican-friendly as a business organization can get.

Yet Obama now rarely misses the chance to tout the sanctity of the mom-and-pop shop and voice support for legislation that eases lending to Main Street. Over the last few weeks, he has stopped at a sign-making company in Washington and the Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, N.J., to showcase his support. Half of his July 17 weekly address was about this.

“Helping small businesses, cutting taxes, making credit available,” Obama said in New Jersey, “this is as American as apple pie.” . . .

Now the Dems have passed a $600 million border bill in the Senate, but they have done so after previous cuts in the budget.