Jonah Goldberg: Obama still has clout, but only because it came with the office - latimes.com: "Obama seems incapable of moving public opinion, at least among people who don't already agree with him. You can tell his handlers have noticed because his talking points have become top-heavy with jargon freshly minted from focus groups: corporate jet owners, 'winning the future,' raising revenue instead of raising taxes, etc.
Similarly, his shopworn rhetoric has become more desperate. On July 5, he said of the debt-ceiling negotiations, 'It's my hope … that we'll all leave our political rhetoric at the door.' The next day he insisted that 'the debt ceiling should not be … used as a gun against the heads of the American people to extract tax breaks for corporate jet owners, for oil and gas companies that are making billions of dollars because the price of gasoline has gone up so high.'
When Obama says people should drop their political rhetoric, he means everyone else."
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