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Marco Rubio Uses Obama's Own Words Against Him After Former President Calls for 'Decency'

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Former President Barack Obama’s speech Friday at the University of Illinois has dominated several news cycles. This isn’t surprising since it represents the first time the former president has really addressed the sitting president by name instead of skirting around him using innuendoes, treating him as if he were Voldemort.

What has been surprising are the rapturous plaudits Obama’s speech received. I understand most of what Obama does gets plaudits in the mainstream media — but there was an unusual audacity to pretty much everything he said, and it didn’t involve the audacity of hope.

Four times during the speech did a president who intentionally divided America for eight years in the White House talk about “divisions,” according to a transcript from Vox; and each of those “divisive” instances involved Republicans.

Do you think Barack Obama was divisive as president?
When Obama invoked “decent” or “decency,” however, he spoke exclusively of Democrats. That’s the party that, at the very moment the former president was making the speech, was using the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings as an advertisement for the midterms and beyond.

It didn’t take much to notice the incongruence. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida certainly did, and he went to Twitter to expose it.

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Yes, Obama did all of that. And so much more, too!

Ah yes, not divisive at all. And then Rubio brought out what was arguably Obama’s most divisive hit, released before he even took up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania.

This is how the same man who talked about how “the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican Party” on Friday explained those people who disagreed with the Democrats on issues like trade or immigration: guns and religion. I didn’t find that quote mentioned a whole lot after Friday’s address.

And there were more of Obama’s greatest hits to remind people of. Much more.

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The media seemed to have collective amnesia about these comments on Friday. And Obama did, too.

“I am here to tell you that even if you don’t agree with me or Democrats on policy, even if you believe in more libertarian economic theories, even if you are an evangelical and our position on certain social issues is a bridge too far, even if you think my assessment of immigration is mistaken and the Democrats aren’t serious enough about immigration enforcement, I’m here to tell you that you should still be concerned with our current course and should still want to see a restoration of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government,” he told the audience.

How wonderful it would have been if the spirit “of honesty and decency and lawfulness in our government” been evident in all the years Obama was in office or his party maintained any of the levers of power in Washington. Today, if you wanted to see the real spirit — or, dare I say, “lodestar” — of the Democrats in action, you need only have watched the Kavanaugh hearings.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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