OBAMARAMA

CNBC host Larry Kudlow penned a column that is highly critical of Sen. Obama in yesterday’s Kansas City Star — basically a cut-and-paste of an article he wrote a week earlier for the right-wing forum Townhall.com — that demands attention. While it’s no surprise that Kudlow, a conservative pundit and loyal Reaganite, is not Sen. Obama’s biggest fan, his facile demagoguery of Sen. Obama’s record is in serious need of a closer eye.

In framing his attack, Kudlow opts for the “Obama as Marxist leftist” assault, a one-size-fits-all strategy for throwing mud at Democrats that Kudlow employs regularly, and which was first initiated against Sen. Obama by disgraced former House Majority leader Tom Delay. Unlike the scattered assault of this week’s Washington Times op-ed, Kudlow opens by calling Sen. Obama “an extremely liberal-left politician,” and then sticks to his narrative, refusing to let the obstinacy of the facts get in his way.

Kudlow begins with a disingenuous argument about tax cuts. Because Sen. Obama opposed extending them further to capital gains and dividends — a benefit accrued only by the very richest Americans — Kudlow labels him “anti-growth.” Ironically, Kudlow suggests Sen. Obama “justified” his vote through “the old class-warfare saw about tax cuts for the rich.” But there’s no older saw than that of a rich conservative attacking a Democrat as being anti-growth just because he objects to lining your pockets at a time of skyrocketing government debt and in the midst of two expensive wars — both of which you pushed, by the way.

Not surprisingly, Kudlow then extends his tired, aristocratic logic to the estate tax (which, of course, he refers to by its Frank Luntz-ordained title, “the death tax“), suggesting it will hurt family farms and small businesses who are “forced to sell their legacies because of this tax.” What Kudlow conveniently neglects to mention is that the only people in these categories who will be affected by the estate tax are those whose wealth puts them among the richest 2% of Americans. Once again, Kudlow attacks Sen. Obama for refusing to make him and Paris Hilton richer.

Kudlow’s concern for U.S. farmers suddenly vanishes when he shifts his attention to energy independence, however. He says Sen. Obama “voted against” U.S. energy independence because he “has opposed lifting a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol.” But Kudlow fails to note that Sen. Obama supports the tariff because he wants to support U.S. farmers who are producing ethanol. Where’s Kudlow’s concern for U.S. family farms now? And more importantly, how is supporting domestic energy production anti-energy independence? Is there anything more independent than producing your own energy? Is shifting our dependence from foreign oil to foreign ethanol really the sort of progress we want to make?

Once he gets out of the realm of economics, Kudlow’s attacks quickly erode into deceitful drivel. He says Sen. Obama “said no to Patriot Act wiretap extensions, despite their proven effectiveness in halting terrorist ?ttacks,” but offers no evidence of this nonexistent “proof” of the “effectiveness” of circumventing the legal system in order to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant. He accuses Sen. Obama of having “collaborated in blocking John Bolton’s appointment to the United Nations,” but doesn’t say it was Republican rejection of Bolton that led to his dismissal. He criticizes Sen. Obama for opposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, as if this is somehow a liberal position despite being held by 53 percent of Americans.

Finally, in a swan song of sophistry, Kudlow asserts that if he wants to be viable, Sen. Obama better move to the right, since “Democrats won their congressional majority by doing their best impersonation of Republicans.” Excuse me? Were we watching the same election? In the one I saw, Democrats retook Congress because Americans wanted it to be run by anyone BUT Republicans.

Kudlow’s vociferousness is no surprise, though. Republicans are deeply worried about the threat to their hegemony and power that would be posed by an Obama candidacy. As well they should be.