“No,” Jennifer Rubin writes this morning, Obama’s jobs proposal “isn’t anything new.” Yesterday, in a speech to union members in Detroit, he signaled that he’ll be proposing “a major infrastructure program and an extension of a payroll tax break in the jobs speech he planned to deliver Thursday before a joint session of Congress.”

He said, “We’ve got roads and bridges across this country that need to be rebuilt”.  Um, wasn’t the “stimulus” with all its “shovel-ready” projects supposed to take care of that?

Instead of talking in unifying post-partisan terms, he attempted to bait his partisan adversaries, ”We’re going to see if we’ve got some straight shooters in Congress. We’re going to see if congressional Republicans will put country before party“.  Why can’t this guy just put his proposals forward without questioning the motives of the Republican opposition?

In the speech, he repeated one of his rhetorical tropes, insisting (as if he hadn’t been president for the past 31 months) that the “time for Washington games is over. The time for action is now”.

Alas that the type of action the president favors is at odds with the type of solutions the American people favor.  Looking at the most recent Washington Post poll, Jon Cohen and Dan Balz find that

. . .  there has been little change in the widespread public perception that Obama favors a bigger federal government that offers more services.

That highlights a major disconnect between Obama and the public. Only 38 percent of those polled say they favor a larger government with more services, while 56 percent say they favor a smaller government with fewer services.

(Post article via Jim Geraghty.)

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As I was attending various family events and traveling, I won’t have much time to blog, so will put a quotation out there which, I hope, will spur some discussion. I first read it in Andrew Ferguson’s piece in the Weekly Standard on the newest entrant into the Republican presidential contest, Texas Governor Rick Perry.

For now, I will say that while I am (with one major concern in terms of policy* and a number of concerns about his style) impressed with the general tenor of the the Air Force veteran’s campaign, a number of conservative bloggers and pundits have raised some questions about his record. (Jennifer Rubin has offered perhaps the best critiques of his candidacy.)

So, here’s his comment on homosexuality which I trust our readers to consider with spirit, insight and intelligence:

“Though I am no expert on the ‘nature versus nurture’ debate, I can sympathize with those who believe sexual preference is genetic,” he wrote. “I respect their right to engage in the individual behavior of their choosing, but they must respect the right of millions in society to refuse to normalize their behavior.”

“We must draw a line in the sand: People have the right to decide for themselves what they will believe in the core of their being, and how they will live,” he wrote. “For those who want to throw stones at homosexuals in the name of calling out sin, may they be just as loud about adultery among heterosexuals and pornography among their own churchgoing friends.”

I do like the libertarian tenor of his views and expect to have more to say on this anon.  They are in the same vein as comments by from his fellow candidate Herman Cain.

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