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Barack Obama's most bizarre argument is that "the policies of the past eight years," SPECIFICALLY the big deficits and debt, are responsible for getting us into this mess, so the answer is to add far more to the deficit and debt. This isn't "hair of the dog that bit you," it's "the bite of a pit bull (to cure) the dog's hair that made you sneeze."

Of course, Philip also has it right in noting that Obama's definition of "rigid ideology" is anything that doesn't agree with him, while his definition of bipartisanship is for Republicans to do exactly what he wants merely because he deigns to be in their presence.

I have a lifelong friend who went to Dartmouth and, after a few years there, told me how it was that he decided he certainly wasn't a modern liberal. He told me he was walking across campus with another guy, a lib, and they were dicussing their attitudes about various issues. "Well, you are open-minded about XXX," the other guy would say, "but you are close-minded about YYY. Then again, you are open-minded about QQQ, but I don't understand why you are so close-minded about SSS, TTT, and UUU." [Obviously, fill in the letters with whatever issues were current at the time.]

"It suddenly occurred to me," my friend told me, "that on anything where I agreed with him, he said I was open-minded, and wherever I differed, he said I was close-minded. And I decided then and there that to be liberal was to be so close-minded that you see all disagreement as being close-mindedness."

Obama is a perfect stand-in for that Dartmouth liberal. Except that he's worse: He consistently makes promises he can't or won't keep, consistently refuses to acknowledge his own errors even while changing his stance (and thus tacitly showing that his past stance was wrong), and consistently fails, ALWAYS, to actually act in the bipartisan spirit that he talks about embracing. He has no record, none whatsoever, of compromising, ever, ever, ever, on actual policy. He was, by actual measurement, the most liberal member of the Senate, and he is the most leftist president ever. Just six months ago congressional liberals were talking about a $60 billion stimulus. Now Obama, fresh off of an Inaugural where he said we should stress our hopes but not our fears, is saying that unless we pass a stimulus 15 times as big, we're all doomed, doomed, doomed.

This, even though even the Congressional Budget Office says the package will actually slow long-term growth rather than adding to it.

Obama is a menace, and his policies must be defeated.