During his opening “Talking Point Memo” opening monologue on Tuesday, host Bill O’Reilly gave credit where was due in that early on, conservative radio talk show hosts warned Barack Obama would be ill-equipped for the presidency of the United States.
O’Reilly laid where the ideological split existed, but then explained that once you go beyond the personal criticisms of Obama and focus on competency criticisms, those radio talk show host were correct.
“We will begin with this question: Were the conservative radio talk show hosts correct about President Obama from the beginning?” O’Reilly said. “That is the subject of this evening’s ‘Talking Points Memo.’ As you may know, there is bitter divide between committed liberals and staunch conservatives. The debate often gets nasty, personal and even defamatory. The left basically wants a different America — a progressive place where the federal government calls the shot. The right wants to maintain tradition and believes that smaller government is best.”
“Enter, perhaps, the most liberal president in history, Barack Obama,” he continued. “From the beginning of his pain in 2007, he has been severely criticized on conservative talk radio. No surprise there. The president stands for things the right-wing loathes. Criticism is directed at the president are both personal and professional. The personal stuff doesn’t amount to much. He is not a Muslim. He was not born in Kenya. He has never done anything nefarious — word of the day. But the professional criticisms are turning out to be somewhat valid. A new CBS News-New York Times poll, usually very generous to the president, shows his administration has collapsed in the court of public opinion. Independents have joined conservatives in believing the president is not doing a good job. The basic problem is competency. And you may remember that the radio guys pointed out that Barack Obama had little experience running anything — that he was basically a community organizer and theoretician if you examine the facts without emotion, that seems to be accurate. Mr. Obama’s management skill and problem-solving ability are dubious.”
O’Reilly used Obama’s remarks on the campaign trail in 2008 to rebuild the VA, which is embroiled in a waitlist scandal that seems to taking a toll on the president’s current polling.
“So what happened to that pledge? Well, the VA is now a scandal. There are allegations that more than 1,000 American vets have actually died because they could not access proper care. The VA admits that more than 120,000 vets waited far too long for doctors so see them. In addition, the feds have paid out $845 million to settle VA malpractice suits. Sen. [Tom] Coburn of Oklahoma, a physician himself has identified $20 billion wasted by the VA. Despite that $111 million given to VA ad in bonus money in 2010 alone — a shocking abuse of taxpayer money.”
If you add the VA situation to the other things taxing the Obama White House, O’Reilly said that proves conservative talkers were right in that Obama has underwhelmed as commander-in-chief.
“And while all that was happening, President Obama did nothing, absolutely nothing,” he added. “Add that the border, Iraq, Putin, the IRS and you have an administration that’s basically missing in action. In fact, for you history buffs what’s happening right now is almost identical to President U.S. Grant’s second term. It all fell apart for the old general because did he not pay attention. So, to be fair, it looks like the conservative radio talk show hosts were correct in their assessment of Barack Obama’s ability to run the country. Or am I wrong?”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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