Brit journalist: 'Obama is a dangerous left winger'

Kudos to Rush Limbaugh for calling attention to this remarkable piece by Gerard Baker of The Times of London.

Baker begins by considering Michelle Obama's revealing statement last week that only since the positive response of Democratic voters to her husband's candidacy has she ever been proud to be an American. Such a shallow, ungrateful and clueless view on the part of a potential First Lady is quite properly a humiliation and an embarassment to any presidential candidate, and Mrs. Obama- doubtless with the encouragement of others- has tried rather lamely to back off from it.

But the problem is deeper than Mrs. Obama's incredible ingratitude and lack of perceptiveness about her own country. The worldview her amazing remark reflects is also reflected in the Far Left rhetoric of her husband. Baker's headline pretty much says it all: "Obama: is America ready for this dangerous leftwinger?" Listen to Obama's rhetoric, Baker invites us:

While he speaks of the need for Americans to move beyond partisanship (“We are not blue states or red states, but the United States” is a campaign meme), when you cut through the verbiage there is nothing to suggest he believes anything that is seriously at odds with the far Left of his party. If you think about it for a second, it's not really an accident that he has been endorsed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.

Though he talks with great eloquence about the future, he sounds for all the world like one of the long line of Democrats from George McGovern to Walter Mondale to Michael Dukakis, who became history by espousing policies and striking a rhetorical pose that was well out of the mainstream of American politics.

I disagree with Baker's assertion that the Republican party has ever preached intolerance during the Bush era, though it's hard to argue against his charge that in many areas- the pre-Petraeus prosecution of the war in Iraq perhaps chief among them- the current administration has been tragically incompetent. But it's clear that where Obama is concerned, Baker is right: the senator from Illinois is a dangerous and extreme left-winger, whose own rhetoric leaves no doubt but that he wants to re-create America in the image of the high tax social welfare states of Europe. His conciliatory rhetoric about how there really are no blue states or red states, but only the United States, conceals an extreme and divisive vision well out of the mainstream of the American political tradition- and wholly alien to the values of American people.