Ex-UN ambassador: Obama unqualified to lead
Former Ambassador John Bolton speaks at the Conservative Principles Conference hosted by U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, March 26, 2011, in Des Moines, Iowa. / AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
DES MOINES, Iowa - Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton said Saturday that President Barack Obama isn't qualified to lead the country.
Bolton was among the featured speakers at a conference of conservative Republicans in Iowa. Bolton was nominated for the ambassadorship in 2005 by President George W. Bush.
Bolton told the crowd that Mr. Obama doesn't care enough about national security issues and doesn't view the world as a threatening place. Bolton also says the U.S. could have made a big difference in Libya, but Mr. Obama couldn't make up his mind on which steps to take.
Several potential GOP presidential candidates also spoke during the event in Des Moines. Iowa Congressman Steve King says he organized the event to allow conservatives to shape the debate as Republicans begin seeking an opponent for Mr. Obama.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, a favorite of the conservative, anti-tax tea party, got the noisiest reception when she told about 500 people that voters are ready to overturn the federal health care law and oust President Barack Obama during next year's election.
"The ultimate arrogance, in my opinion, is Obama-care," the Minnesota congresswoman said. "That's why I am so absolutely confident in 2012. Americans have made the decision that we're going to take our country back."
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain also spoke during the event.
"We need to take this nation to the next level of its destiny," King told the crowd. "You can shape that destiny."
Iowa's caucuses traditionally launch the presidential nominating season, and the sharply conservative rhetoric Saturday reflects an Iowa Republican Party that has drifted to the right. Polling last year showed more than 60 percent of Republican Party caucus-goers identified themselves as evangelical Christians.
Gingrich and Barbour insisted that most Americans agree with their conservative values. Gingrich said the 2012 election would provide a chance to end the "domination of the left and move this country back to the center-right."
Barbour dismissed suggestions that Mr. Obama has moved to the center in preparation for next year's election. He said the president's proposed budget "calls for spending to go up, it calls for the deficit to go up."
The governor also said Republicans can win next year if their candidates stay focused on key issues -- health care and balancing the federal budget -- without getting distracted by arguments about personality.
"What is important to us is to have a new president," Barbour said. "This election needs to be about policy."
That theme appeared to be in play Saturday. The speakers focused on criticizing Mr. Obama and Democrats, and made little effort to find differences with each other, though Gingrich did note that he "helped balance a budget for four straight years" while House speaker.
Gingrich briefly drifted from the event's mostly domestic theme to attack Mr. Obama's handling of the air strikes in Libya. He ridiculed Mr. Obama for consulting the Arab League and the United Nations, but not Congress, before getting involved. Gingrich said he wouldn't have approved the air strikes, but "once you get involved, you put on the pressure and you win quickly."
Cain, who didn't speak about the federal health care law, said the conservative movement is gaining strength and will help Republicans take back the government. He said the U.S. has "an entitlement spending crisis" that must be reformed in order to solve the nation's financial woes.
"We don't like the radical socialist agenda that is being shoved down our throats," said Cain, who lives in suburban Atlanta.
Bachmann, meanwhile, said the effort to repeal the health care reform law has created a strong tide of support for Republicans positioning themselves for next year's election.
"It's never gone below a majority of Americans who want to see Obama-care repealed," Bachmann said. "This is, I believe, the greatest power grab that I have ever seen."
The stakes in next year's election are enormous, she added.
"What we are going to determine together, here in Iowa, is quite frankly whether we will pass the American Dream on to the next generation," Bachmann said.
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At last, the adamantine Lame Stream Media agreement to never mention a single viable Conservative candidate for the 2012 Presidential election has been broken.
Shamefully, the only names mentioned, even in this article, as candidates are largely from the long list of once important politicians who rarely strayed into the bloody arena.
John Bolton lived in the arena, and served this nation well, under extreme circumstances forced on him by our disloyal and dishonorable majority now failing in place. Bolton is the single male candidate who can defeat any disloyal majority candidate advanced to replace the disgraced abamination, except HRC. Unfortunately, HRC's drafting for 2012 is nearly assured by the abamination's vile political undercutting of her efforts in Libya. Bolton's selection as one of the 2012 team as opposed to giving our proven losers another chance is absolutely necessary, with the fate of our Republic hanging by a thread, from Ben Bernanke's Helicopter. It is also, exactly the break through politics that the millions of Taxed Enough Already Americans powering the Tea Parties have demanded and deserve. We intend and deserve to be heeded, by the good old boys club members, all eagerly awaiting their own timely turns, in elections yet to be lost, by deliberate refusal by the Congressional Club members to listen to the wave of Americans energized by the revulsion arising from Congressional bankrupting of America. Hyperinflation is now pending, due to Bernanke's attempts to monetize Congressional fecklessness in their $15 trillions in waste, by destroying the US dollar's value.
More importantly, and if, and only if, Condi Rice, the only other viable conservative candidate can be dragged kicking and screaming "Not again" into the only possible effort to save the Republic, as President or Vice President, with John Bolton as the other half of the team, we can be sure that HRC, now near certain to be drafted, as guaranteed by the abamination's dithering, and dumping his Plan to fail in Libya on her shoulders, to replace Obama in 2012, can be handily defeated as well.
It is a delightful spectacle, as we watch to see if the only senior appointee in the abamination with the cajones to handle the Libyan dictator can snatch Pan Arab Freedom from her President's plan to fail in Libya. Or, will she be undercut and disarmed by the abamanation's dithering. It will be even more exciting, if she frees most of the world's Arabs in the lead up to 2012, gets drafted to replace the "boy wonder" and is then beaten at the 2012 polls, by the only two senior appointees in the Bush administration, still young enough, and proven to bear sufficient cajones and the shear genius to handle the debacles of those years, and these, whilst earning their political bones necessary and sufficient to actually end the HilBillary Co-Presidency.
That Co-Presidency is certainly dreaded as much by Obama as by our conservative coalition of millions of serving, active, reserve and retired veterans, Taxed Enough Already Americans, the NRA, and Libertarians, et al. We must end HRCs political career, if a little more honorably, in an election defeat, than The One Ditherer in Chief has covertly planned and acted to do, by hanging the blame for his Libyan adventure debacle on HRC, and then undercutting her every effort with more dithering, while Arabs die in their thousands, and hopes for Pan Arab liberty die, or are aborted.
We are amused, and terrified, at the prospects of HRC, surviving Obama's vile attempted political destruction of her near certain drafting to replace him, and adding another two terms of her heroic and cajone driven adult supervision of two infamous boys toting lesser assets. Her pulling, from fires of their own making, the endangered nuts of her and our own two feckless boy Presidents, one with an uncontollable zipper, and a weird personal "bent" and the other with an uncontollable speech teleprompter, and a weird dithering bent that may end the Arab miracle, or America. It all depends on whether HRC frees some or most Arabs on the strength of her own "peach pit cajones" and pulls it out to ensure two more, and far "too many" HilBillary Co-Presidency terms, near certain to drive American down the death spiral of socialism. That is of course, unless Bolton and Rice are allowed to stand up for America, and lead us out of these incredible risks, in two more terms, without HilBillary in government,at last.
Nixon had been VP and was qualified. GHW Bush was certainly qualified. Ike had no political experience, but I think his title of supreme allied commander should have counted. Least qualified by far would have to be Obama.
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Hi Nmm,
No, actually the least qualified was President Carter.
But the most destructive far-and-away was President George W. Bush. Which is why I am so cynical about him - he knew and was warned he was taking us off the deep end and he did it anyway.
It is very hard to respect a president who didn't care - as for Carter he just didn't know any better. Ironically Carter may have become the best ex-president we ever had.
But I'm sure that's why he was yucking it up over McCain's birthday cake the morning after Katrina hit....
Right.