Friday, June 22, 2012

FAST AND FURIOUS, BEYOND GUN CONTROL: OBAMA WANTS TO ERASE HIS FIRST (AND ONLY) POLITICAL DEFEAT

The root of Operation Fast and Furious is gun control. And the root of Barack Obama’s obsession with gun control is not typical left-wing politics, but the burning memory of the only political defeat in his career: his failed primary challenge against incumbent Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) in 2000, when Obama’s hypocrisy on gun control legislation earned him the outrage and ridicule of the Chicago media, and sealed his electoral defeat. - Joel B. Pollak/Breitbart

Then-state senator Obama had backed a bipartisan bill called the Safe Neighborhoods Act. It would have raised the crime of illegal transport of a firearm from a misdemeanor to a felony. But on the crucial day of the vote, Obama was out of town--and on vacation, in Hawaii. The bill failed by only three votes, and the media pounced--as did Obama’s rivals. It was the moment, Obama later said, when he knew he would lose the race.

...Obama and Holder, united in their dislike of guns, are now bound even more tightly by Fast and Furious. But Obama always had a motive beyond anti-gun ideology: the desire to erase his first defeat. His abuse of executive privilege will not prevent his second.