Gettin’ changey with it

How do you convince people that you’re going to change politics in Washington? After spending the last several months telling people he’s all about change, Barack Obama’s actions speak louder than his words. He names Joe Biden, who has been in the Senate since 1973, as his running mate. Then he opens his convention with a speech from the living monument to the Democrats’ status quo, Teddy Kennedy – who also tries to convince us that he’s all about the change at his “surprise” appearance we’d all known about for two days.

In today’s Washington Times, Jim McElhatton uncatalogued some of the reasons that Biden can’t be considered an agent of change in Washington;

Mr. Biden’s campaign has hired lawyers from his son’s firm to do its legal work. His son’s firm lobbied for the University of Delaware and, in turn, Mr. Biden championed federal funding for lucrative projects, known as earmarks, in congressional spending bills.

In addition, Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, once worked for MBNA, the giant credit-card company, whose employees are the elder Biden’s largest source of campaign contributions and whose side Mr. Biden took in a controversial bankruptcy-law fight.

All of which makes Mr. Biden a veteran of the types of insider fights that “outsiders” are supposed to eschew. “He’s no stranger to how the system works,” said David Williams, vice president of policy for the Citizens Against Government Waste.

Republicans are seizing on the ties between Mr. Biden and his son’s lobbying firm, calling Mr. Biden “a model Washington insider with numerous connections to lobbyists and special interests,” said Danny Diaz, spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

But Mr. Obama’s campaign, which refuses donations from federal lobbyists, downplayed the criticism and said that the senator’s son has never lobbied his father on behalf of any clients or employers.

In addition to Biden’s old school politics, Obama’s policy approaches all include traditional Liberal massive tax hikes, he handily throws out the old class warfare cliches about special interests, overpaid CEOs and evil corporations. Obama is pro-abortion, and he thinks all of the solutions to all of our problems spring from the Federal government.

So what is he going to change?

Well according to Donald Lambro, in the Washington Times, he’s changed the Democrats into a far-Left party;

There is no doubt that the liberals are now in full control of the Democratic Party and that Sen. Barack Obama is commander in chief of their bid to “take back America.”

The Democratic Leadership Council’s centrist-leaning agenda of free trade, a strong defense and welfare-to-work reform that helped propel Bill Clinton’s rise to power in 1992 is hardly visible here.

Instead, it is the far-left grass-roots organizations who are out in full force and fury here at the Democratic National Convention, raising questions about whether the Obama campaign, by embracing them, risks alienating the moderate swing voters who made Mr. Clinton the first two-term Democratic president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The only change Obama offers is his personage, because as he says, he doesn’t look like previous presidents. That’s it, that’s all we get for change. A guy who looks different. He surrounds himself with the same old tax-and-spend liberals, and has the audacity to assume that we’re stupid enough to vote for him because of his appearance.

He may indeed change the country by ringing the death knell for the far-left sound machine.

Here’s some change I can believe in;

DavidL on Bits Blog thinks the Democrats are in panic mode.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Politics