Republicans must not fall prey to this manipulative president

Three days ago, Barack Obama, president of all Americans, threatened to once again disrupt the flow of payments to our military and our elderly, raise the specter of food poisoning, plane crashes and nuclear spills, all because of Republicans.  The argument of raising the debt ceiling is old now, we’ve gone through this before, and the rhetoric is quite aggressive.

If congressional Republicans refuse to pay America’s bills on time, Social Security checks, and veterans benefits will be delayed.

We might not be able to pay our troops, or honor our contracts with small business owners. Food inspectors, air traffic controllers, specialists who track down loose nuclear materials wouldn’t get their paychecks.

But as Jedediah Bila points out in her latest piece, the president is actually the one who would allow those things to happen, showing his manipulation of the facts and false premises.

On his radio show last night, Mark Levin emphasized the key point:

“We, as a nation, will not go into default anytime soon because our revenue exceeds our debt payments. So the full faith and credit of the United States is not in danger unless the President puts it in danger.”

See what Levin did there? He told the truth, then put the debt ball right back in Obama’s court. In other words, Mr. President, we’re not giving you a limitless credit card to steal from future generations. And we’re not going to let you lie about the consequences of not hiking the ceiling, either.

In a recent segment with Levin, Sen. Ted Cruz articulated a similar point:

“Not raising the debt ceiling does not mean we default on the debt. And President Obama saying that is just fear mongering and deliberately deceiving people. The average tax revenues for the federal government are roughly $200 billion a month. Service on the debt is between thirty and forty billion dollars a month. There is ample revenue to ensure that we service the debt…”

Covert Aggressive Personality could be the explanation of what the Republicans are dealing with.

The tactics they use are effective because they simultaneously accomplish two objectives very effectively:

  • The tactics conceal obvious aggressive intent. When the covert-aggressive is using the tactics, the other person has little objective reason to suspect that he is simply attempting to gain advantage over them.
  • The tactics covert-aggressive personalities use effectively play on the sensitivity, conscientiousness, and other vulnerabilities of most persons — especially neurotic individuals — and therefore effectively quash any resistance another person might have to giving-in to the demands of the aggressor.

So, it’s this one-two punch of the tactics: never really seeing what’s coming, and being vulnerable to succumbing to them, that’s at the heart of why most people get manipulated by them.

The president can be passive aggressive and uses attribution to deflect blame as well, which might be explained by the thought that President Teleprompter’s public appearances and speeches are written by different people or groups, showcasing tactics most effective in manipulation given a certain set of circumstances.

My purpose here is not to diagnose Obama’s mental state, but to offer reasons why many Republicans continue to be manipulated by him.

So now we are on to gun control, started over an emotional set of circumstances, and the Republicans are setting up to be manipulated again.

There are good arguments that the true reason that the president is pushing for his far-reaching gun control now, is because the nation’s leading gun rights advocate came down very hard on him last year.  Not because he’s a Democrat or that he’s black, or some other non-germane accusation by his loyalists, but because he has been systematically breaking down the right of the people to keep and bear arms.  And the fact that he’s doing it after this horrific crime at Sandy Hook Elementary is to use national emotion instead of facts to subvert the Constitution.

The outer cover of the NRA monthly magazine, American Rifleman, from November 2012, urged gun owners to defeat this man because of his 4 years of continued assault on the 2nd Amendment.  The NRA pointed to the nomination of two anti-gun Supreme Court Justices, Sotomayor, who signed an opinion that the American people do not have the individual right to bear arms, and Kagan, who was a policy advisor to Clinton’s ’94 gun ban, to reversing U.S. policy and participating in U.N. anti-gun treaty negotiations.

The left and the Obama Administration do not believe in the right of the NRA to exist, and instead of treating the 4 million members with good old-fashioned American respect, he’s declaring war on them.

But while Obama overtly blames all possible future economic ills on Republicans in the ‘old news’ debt ceiling debate, he uses subtlety, a dismissal of gun rights advocates in media , vague words in an Executive Order, cynicism of the true motivation of the NRA,  and a call to action for some Republicans to demand the implementation of his gun control measures.

There will be pundits and politicians and special interest lobbyists publicly warning of a tyrannical, all-out assault on liberty — not because that’s true, but because they want to gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves.  And behind the scenes, they’ll do everything they can to block any common-sense reform and make sure nothing changes whatsoever.

The only way we will be able to change is if their audience, their constituents, their membership says this time must be different — that this time, we must do something to protect our communities and our kids….

We’re going to need voices in those areas, in those congressional districts, where the tradition of gun ownership is strong to speak up and to say this is important.  It can’t just be the usual suspects.  We have to examine ourselves and our hearts, and ask ourselves what is important.

And it’s already happening.  One of the Republicans who was constantly bandied about as a Presidential nominee last year, and who is loudly asserting that he will be ready for 2016, is doing what is expected of him by this president.

“If all we talk about is just controlling guns, which we should talk about, then we’re not doing enough,” he said. He added that the “stigma about mental illness treatment in this country” is a contributing factor to gun violence. And he urged Americans to “talk about substance abuse” and the “violence in these video games.”

We should talk about controlling guns, and that’s not enough? Well, if every lead article from here until the president decides we’ve talked enough about the issue and demands congressional action starts like that, the members of the NRA, private citizens exercising their rights, will be indicted as the  reason the nation demands gun control.

While Christie apologists will argue that he is introducing reasons for the GOP to back some possible legislation in order to quell gun violence, it is clear Christie is falling into the manipulation of accepting the premise that it is because of the existence of guns, and gun owners who respect laws, that violence occurs.

At that point, when this national argument comes to a head, when everyone’s anger is heated to crystal-shattering pitch, the president will accuse law-abiding gun-owners of being the very reason violence occurs.

And to those who do not or will not recognize the manipulation, it will almost seem so.


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