Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
Dan Quayle was Vice-President during the years of George H.W. Bush. This was a time that saw the first Gulf War and and deep recession that cost these men their jobs. Actually, were it not for the second Bush Administration, the first would have probably been remembered as the most incompetent Administration ever. Now, Dan Quayle is speaking out and showing he has a lot more intellectual failings than just his spelling skills.
Now, to his credit he does give President Obama a little bit of a compliment:
STATELINE, Nev. -- Former Vice President Dan Quayle gives President Barack Obama high marks for surrounding himself with quality advisers on national security and the economy. But Quayle says it's not yet clear whether Obama's Democratic administration will govern more liberally than he campaigned.
http://www.kentucky.com/...
However, Quayle soon showed the understanding of current events which caused him to be labeled as an intellectual lightweight:
"I think his biggest challenge is to tame the left wing of his party," Quayle said in an interview with The Associated Press at Lake Tahoe.
"I guess we'll find out how 'left' Obama really is, because he's going to have to make some very tough decisions where he is either going to have to go with the left wing of his party or stare them down and govern more like (ex-president Bill) Clinton governed, which is sort of center-left," said the Republican who served in the first Bush administration.
Quayle said Obama ran a "center-left" campaign to get elected, similar to how Quayle and President George H.W. Bush ran "center-right."
"That's the normal situation. Same way with Reagan," Quayle said in an interview after he finished his opening round Friday in a group with former Notre Dame basketball coach Digger Phelps and television personality Maury Povich.
"Now I think they will have to make some tough decisions," Quayle said. "He knows the deficit is menacing. Whether he is willing to stare down the left wing of his party and say, 'Guys, we've got to get this budget in order before we take on too many things,' I don't know."
So, with the crashed economy, expensive wars, and un-Constitutional programs left behind by the neo-cons in the second Bush Administration Dan Quayle thinks that the biggest challenge that faces Obama are the very people who begged for a different path by electing him??
Maybe Quayle should watch a newscast sometime. Barack Obama inherited a crashed economy because of failed Republican policies of waste and greed. He inherited a war in the wrong country that has wasted a trillion dollars of taxpayer money and has caused the same troops to sacrifice over and over again. He inherited a war in Afganistan that should have already been concluded but for the idiotic policies of his predecessor in trying to mop up the failure of Bush/Quayle.
He inherited a healthcare system in which the insurance companies are allowed to run roughshod over Americans and constantly puts profits before people. He has a whole assortment of problems caused since the wasteful Reagan years that eventually led to all the problems we now face. The system of greed set up then, and lovingly embraced by Quayle had to come crashing down eventually like it did last year.
While Obama did run on the center-left, both George Bushes and Dan Quayle certainly were not on the center-right. Their foreign policy was a neo-conservative wet dream that destroyed our standing in the world, wasted thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars of taxpayer money. These folks never met a middle-class job they would not export to take advantage of oppressed slave labor and never knew an idea for Corporate Welfare they opposed. They not only destroyed the American middle-class but they greedily served their Corporate masters while they instituted the failed and idiotic policies of "trickle-down".
So, when did Quayle or any of the other "leaders" in his party ever stare down the lunatic far-right ideologues that ran their own party?? They lovingly embraced the failed ideas of the greediest and least patriotic among us and now our country is paying the price for it. Even more ridiculous is now Quayle sees Obama's only challenge as "staring down" the very people who are trying to reverse decades of failure and idiocy and bring a little balance and justice for ordinary working Americans into public policy for once.
As if this was not bad enough, Quayle had to keep talking showing that Republicans completely misunderstand or just do not care about why they were completely defeated and stripped of power in the last two elections:
As for the GOP, Quayle said the best thing the party may have going for it right now is the Democratic leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., which he views as a negative.
"We're the out party now. We just need to focus on these congressional elections. I think Pelosi and Reid will help us in that endeavor."
You are the "out" party because the American people realize what a total and complete failure and practice in lunacy the Republican Party truly has become. The best thing Republicans have going for them is the poison of the "Blue Dogs" who resemble Dan Quayle and seek to make our party more like the failed party of the former Vice-President.
If these Blue Dogs succeed in sinking the many reforms Americans desperately need such as Universal Healthcare, and EFCA they will cost our party dearly at the ballot box. That is not because Americans agree with failed ideologues like Quayle but because they will once again see Democrats as the party that talks a good game but never has the guts to follow through on them, when it is really just a few gutless corporate Democrats who embrace men like Dan Quayle, either George Bush and Dick Cheney before they embrace the hardworking Americans that trusted them to bring about the change this country needs.
I wish Dan Quayle would go back to wherever he has been for the last several years, and take the corporate tainted Blue Dogs who share his ideology with him.