Armstrong Williams on Beliefs Without Convictions

The conservative Republican commentator, on President Barack Obama: "President Obama was elected with a multitude of beliefs ranging from health care and climate control to Guantanamo Bay detainees and the war in Iraq. But he entered the White House with two radical convictions which guide his beliefs and for which he would subordinate political maneuvering or optics. His first conviction is that politicians and bureaucrats can run the economy and redistribute income better than the invisible hand of the American laissez-faire capitalist system. His second conviction is that America’s foreign policy should be determined by an international leftist academic and media elite and not by the interests of the American people. Beliefs have short shelf lives. Convictions are forever and justify risking political defeat in defense of principles that live for the ages."

Calling him the political Bernie Madoff intent on destroying America, Mr. Williams highlights areas where President Obama has flip-flopped: "He was for public financing of his general presidential campaign, until he was against it when he realized he had discovered a fund-raising juggernaut. He was against an individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, until he was for it to expand his political base and to throw his arms around a decision of the United States Supreme Court. He was an opponent of the death penalty for child rapists, until he was for it to appeal to social conservatives. He was against the state secrets doctrine to block litigation alleging government complicity in torture, illegal surveillance or arbitrary y detentions, until he was for expanding the doctrine beyond the dimensions of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. He was against spying on Americans without individualized warrants to gather foreign intelligence, until he was in favor of group warrants and retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies implicated in criminal and civil violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He was against presidential power to detain citizens or residents indefinitely without accusation or trial in the war on international terrorism, until he was for it after entering the White House. He was against detentions of 'enemy combatants' at Guantanamo Bay for nebulous associations with al Qaeda, until he was for it as long as the pejorative label was dropped. He was against maintaining U.S. troops in Iraq after 2011, until he was for 50,000 (a greater number than are stationed in Japan or South Korea) if they could euphemistically be described as 'non-combatant combatants.' He was against unchecked presidential power, until he was in favor of acting as the nation’s economic czar empowered to pick and choose winners and losers by decree. He was against lobbyists serving in his Cabinet, until he was for it by granting a waiver for his Deputy Secretary of Defense. He was in favor of Tom Daschle’s nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services despite glaring income tax dereliction, until he was against it when the nomination fell into disfavor. He was in favor of whistleblower protection for intelligence agency employees, until he was against it. He was against a president’s failure to fulfill his duty to faithfully execute, not circumvent the laws, until he was in favor of it after he occupied the White House and confronted evidence of torture authorized or practiced by Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, their subordinates and lawyers in the Department of Justice."