ABC News has an advance copy of Michele Bachmann’s soon-to-be-released book “Core of Conviction,” and is sharing a few tidbits, including her statement that, by pushing the TARP program, Bush and then-Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson were “embracing a kind of ‘bailout socialism.’”
She also slams John McCain (“painful”) and John Boehner (“disappointing”) for the same sin and believes that if McCain had stood strong on his free market principles and allowed banks to fail, he might have won the 2008 election.
The book is not an overall Bush-blaming-fest, however and is full of praise for the former president in other areas. Not so the current occupant of the Oval Office. ABC writes:
“Bachmann, however, saves her most critical language for President Obama, accusing him of bolstering ‘moochers’ and ‘hustlers’ directing federal money to ‘political allies’ and liberal activist groups.
‘Those in the Obama administration didn’t care where the stimulus money was going,’ she writes. ‘What really mattered was spreading money to their friends and political allies — the big-city liberal mayors, the [community organizer] Saul Alinksy nostalgists, the ACORN activists, the taxpayer-subsidy-dependent green-jobs propagandists, and all the other moochers, hustlers and rent seekers demanding ‘a place at the table’ when liberals control the White House.’
The book’s publication date is next week.
I have also read those passages. Black quotes them out of context, which shows that Bush was a minor sinner compared with the scale of Obama’s crony capitalism.
Leave it to Our Gal Shelley to completely miss the irony of her own prattling. She claims Bush practiced “bailout Socialism” (if she even knew what that word meant) by saving those “too-big-to-fail” Wall Street firms and insurance companies.
Maybe, but it’s never dawned on Shelley that giving tax breaks to the so-called “job creators” (the wealthy, and large corporations) is the same thing as her “bailout Socialism”; she just doesn’t call it that. When you provide subsidies to those groups at the expense of everyone else and the economy as a whole, you’re the pot calling the kettle black.
Of course, Our Gal Shelley gets a subsidy for her family farm. Even if she denies she’s ever benefited from it, if it were true then she’d be railing against the members of her family that did benefit; but she’s not doing that, either. For all her “free market” rambling, Shelley doesn’t believe in a free market, except for the 99% who have been working harder for less money for more than 30 years. The remaining 1% that make up the oligarchs have been living the high life and are given every advantage and incentive to screw the remaining 99% in every way, with no consequences.
Hypocrisy, thy name is Shelley Bachmann!
And again, it would be socialism only if Obama had nationalized the financial institutions that were bailed out.
A government loan (most were paid back) does not constitute public (government) ownership, which is the definition of socialism.
Not only hypocritical, but ignorant.
Derek–
‘Claims’ is not ‘shows’.
And it’s interesting that conservatives seem to emphasize ‘government of the people’; implying a separation between government and the people, while progressives are more concerned with government -by- and -for- the people; government is us.
“moochers’ and hustlers”? Wow, there’s gonna be one angry Marcus at the dinner table tonight!!!