Stanely Kurtz wrote a fantastic article today connecting Obama’s leftist New Party membership and endorsement to his opposition to Clinton’s Welfare Reform bill. And it echos into the present with a great deal of relevancy:
NRO – In 1996, the year President Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform bill, Obama became a member of a leftist third party called the New Party. The Obama campaign denied this in 2008, and continues to deny it today, although contemporaneous documents now definitively prove it. The core purpose of the New Party was to pull the country to the left of the Clinton Democrats. Opposition to the welfare reform act virtually defined the New Party’s position.
The most important plank in the New Party’s platform was a guaranteed minimum income for all adults, regardless of whether they worked. In 1996, when Obama joined the party and gained its endorsement, candidates had to speak up in favor of the party platform to seal the deal. Obama also knew and had personally discussed the goals of the New Party with the party’s national leader, Joel Rogers, who was preoccupied with the guaranteed minimum income provision. …
…It matters that Obama has historically been on the far-left side of liberal on this issue. Obama was willing to go so far as to join a leftist third party at the very moment when Clinton signed onto work requirements for welfare. Opposition to Clinton’s position was at the heart of Obama’s move. That leftist background goes a long way toward explaining why Obama would risk stirring up a national controversy over changes to a welfare reform bill that the public was happy with.
Much of the debate over the claims in Romney’s new ad hinge on what you think Obama’s long-term intentions for welfare reform actually are. Either you believe the president when he and his representatives say that this change to the work requirements is just a tiny tweak that doesn’t mean much, or you believe conservative policy experts like Robert Rector, who say that all that talk is a smokescreen for an attempt to gut the core of the 1996 bill.
To resolve this conflict, voters need to form a judgement about Obama’s long-term intentions. And to make that decision, Obama’s leftist history on this issue is pertinent information. In short, the president’s past matters, as the Romney campaign itself pointed out when it raised his 1996 statements in opposition to welfare reform. Have a look at what else Obama was doing that year, and the point becomes stronger still.
READ MORE HERE, including how Acorn head Wade Rathke fits into this equation.