CBS News Director: Obama Must Go for the Throat

A month ago I wrote, in a piece on FrontPage Mag called “The Art of Class War,” that progressives aren’t interested in coexistence or bipartisanship with the right; they want total domination and our eventual extinction. Last Friday an article subtly titled “Go for the Throat!” appeared on the leftist website Slate in which their chief political correspondent John Dickerson openly confirmed my point, calling for President Obama to destroy the Republican party in his second term.

Writing just prior to Obama’s inaugural ceremony, Dickerson strategized,

The challenge for President Obama’s speech is the challenge of his second term: how to be great when the [D.C.] environment stinks… Washington’s partisan rancor, the size of the problems facing government, and the limited amount of time before Obama is a lame duck all point to a single conclusion: The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat. [Emphasis added]

Thank you, Mr. Dickerson, for putting your party’s totalitarian ruthlessness on the table in plain sight. Thank you for removing any lingering doubt that yours is the fascist party of hatred and intolerance, not to mention lack of diversity where it counts – the diversity of ideas.

Dickerson asserts that Obama has two options as he enters his second term: on the one hand, he can simply be the caretaker to what Dickerson calls “the achievements of his first term. He’d make sure health care reform is implemented, nurse the economy back to health, and put the military on a new footing after two wars.” (Allow me to correct Dickerson here: he means Obama would make sure that his health care leviathan drags us all down into a Euro-socialist wasteland, continue to drive the economy off a cliff, and decimate our military.)

But, Dickerson says with an admiration born of the cult of personality so central to the left’s totalitarianism, “he’s not going for caretaker”; Obama is “more ambitious than that” (most definitely) and is not “content to ride out the second half of the game in the Barcalounger” (definitely not – he’s more likely to ride out the second half of the game on the golf course, where he spent much of the first half).

“How should the president proceed then, if he wants to be bold?” asks Dickerson rhetorically. Press harder for bipartisan consensus? Schmooze with Republicans, perhaps even – shudder – compromise with them? Perish the thought, Dickerson concludes, blaming the Republicans for hindering the progressive march toward Utopia:

That’s the old way. He has abandoned that. He doesn’t think it will work and he doesn’t have the time. As Obama explained in his last press conference, he thinks the Republicans are dead set on opposing him. They cannot be unchained by schmoozing. Even if Obama were wrong about Republican intransigence, other constraints will limit the chance for cooperation. Republican lawmakers worried about primary challenges in 2014 are not going to be willing partners. He probably has at most 18 months before people start dropping the lame-duck label in close proximity to his name.

God knows the radical left resents constraints on their impatient political power grabs. So what’s an Alinsky-steeped former community organizer to do?

Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition's most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray.

Dickerson credits Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek for this theory of what distinguishes the legendary transformational presidents from the mere caretakers. “In order for a president to be transformational,” Dickerson summarizes about the academic’s work, “the old order has to fall as the orthodoxies that kept it in power exhaust themselves.” He concedes that Obama didn’t succeed in his first term with his “gambit… to build a new post-partisan consensus”; of course, by post-partisan consensus, he means the Democrats get their way on every issue and the Republicans shut up, set aside their principles, and surrender every point. “But,” he continues,

by exploiting the weaknesses of today’s Republican Party, Obama has an opportunity to hasten the demise of the old order by increasing the political cost of having the GOP coalition defined by Second Amendment absolutists, climate science deniers, supporters of “self-deportation” and the pure no-tax wing.

So Obama’s aim should be to redefine the right as ossified extremists, and then precipitate the fall of “the old order.”

So what, you say? Someone at some leftist website has exposed the radicalism we already knew defined them. Yes, but his openness is indicative of broader support. As Fox News’ Brit Hume pointed out, Dickerson is not just Slate’s “chief political correspondent” but is also CBS News’ political director. Big Hollywood’s John Nolte notes that a political director at CBS News “is now comfortable openly calling for the destruction of the Republican Party,” knowing he will not be excommunicated or even chastised for it by his mainstream collaborators – I mean, colleagues.

That’s because a second election victory for the post-American president has emboldened the radical forces that propelled him there, and the progressives smell blood. Total victory is within their grasp, they sense, so they no longer feel the need to hide their true goals.

(This article originally appeared here on FrontPage Mag, 1/23/13)