OBAMA TALKIN' TRASH IS HARDLY NEWS

Well now, NR columnist Kathleen Parker has settled back down if only somewhat into her more familiar conservative roots with a few choice words about the new president. We must remember that Ms. Parker was the "good Republican" woman who tore into Governor Sarah Palin as being "out of her league" in this new role as Republican VP nominee. This was an outrageous attack, given the fact that many of us were and are still cringing note for note the same bristling song about the Chicago ACORN-tainted community organizer named Barack Obama.

Hell, with the long line of political scoundrels cluttering up our persistently revised glorious past and the Blagojovich impreachment guilty verdict just delivered in a unanimous blowout, I wonder if anybody on God's green planet is qualified to cleanly govern a state, much less the whole country anymore.

But life moves along. Elections are held. Winners take power. New drapes are ordered. Personal styles and wayward policies are thrust upon us. But apparently Ms. Parker doesn't like trash talkin' playground antics, and it doesn't matter whether it's the skins or the shirts shucking the jive. Personal exemption excepted. Let's take a look:

TWO IMPRESSIONS EMERGE from President Barack Obama's first week in office. Partisanship has reached a tipping point when the new president is circling the fire hydrant with a conservative talk-radio personality. And, the new president is sounding an awful lot like the old one. Let's roll the tape.

"I won. I will trump you on that."

That's Barack Obama a few days ago, according to The Associated Press, speaking to Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona during a meeting with congressional leaders about the proposed stimulus package. Kyl had the audacity to question giving tax credits to people who do not owe federal income taxes.

Rewinding to 2004: "I earned capital in this campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style."

That's George W. Bush after his re-election, explaining his assumption that the American people approved of his many plans, including Social Security reform and the war on terror.

Obama and Bush each mistakenly assumed that his election was a national mandate for his policies, rather than a rejection of alternatives.

Yes, Ms. Parker seems genuinely upset that boys will be boys, particularly if she's a moose-hunting mother of five from the North Country. Personal empowerment? Perhaps the Lady Parker should have supported the judgment of an honor-crippled US Senator from Arizona instead of harping on the genuine freshness which was overworked into a momentary stumble by Sarah Palin.

If Obama had a mandate at all, it was to heal the divisions that have plagued politics for so long. No more partisan bickering, he promised, though there's only about a smirk's difference between Obama and Bush, stylistically. While one is bring-'em-on confrontational and the other a passive-aggressive Mr. Cool, both reveal a staggering sense of personal empowerment.

If only Kathleen Parker knew what the PUMAs knew she would not have believed those phony words by the Democratic machine, which this go round in particular, included every man, woman, and child on the payroll of the mainstream media. Did I say mention this woman calls herself a conservative? She continues in this vein:

Obama was cool even when, at that same GOP meeting, he urged Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. No anger, just angst. "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done."

Excuse me, Mr. President, but you've been baited by none other than the Master Fisherman. Limbaugh tossed you a lure and you chomped.

Uh, yes. El Rushbo—radio talk-show personality, master of ceremonies extraordinaire—certainly has a tendency to stretch over the top, embellishing the picturesque until it smacks of the grotesque, but that is beside the point in this theater of the obvious, and she further details some of that testimony, blasting both Limbaugh and Bush for their predilection toward colorful phrasing. Okay. Did I mention this woman claims to be a conservative? But while she takes the Republicans to task for past linguistic and oratory failures, she continues to whisper sweet nothings to Mr. Obama with these noble words:

Trying to assign blame—or amp up rhetoric to satisfy the market's gargantuan appetite for ratings—is counterproductive in the present. If Obama wants to rumble, he's got an eager foe in Limbaugh. But if he really wants to win, he might take a page from his predecessor's playbook: Never dignify your enemies with recognition...