What if Barack Obama really was opposed to the excesses of the Patriot Act and the general mad panic induced by the War on Terror?
What if he tried to close the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, but was constantly thwarted by Republicans who raved about the horror of unleashing these mutant super-terrorists on our poor defenseless country?
What if he tried passing a health care plan that was basically the GOP alternative to the Clinton plan in 1994 – one well to the right of Nixon in the early 70s – and saw it shot down by a Republican party who reflexively opposed anything he endorsed or proposed?
Wouldn’t it make sense at that point for him to think that the best way to get rid of something he opposed would be to endorse it and wait for the GOP to lash out at it and try to tear it down?
And wouldn’t it make sense for him to make a big splash about the Patriot Act and the wholly-legalized surveillance state, knowing full well that the Republicans would immediately attack it with the same ferocity they attacked anyone opposed to the Patriot Act during the Bush years? Especially with libertarian-pinup-boy Rand Paul as the fashionable face of Silicon Valley Republicanism, one who would no more be able to lay off an attack on the Patriot Act than your correspondent would be able to turn down a plate of barbecue and a glass of bourbon?
Wouldn’t it make perfect sense for Barack Obama to leak the PRISM program himself, knowing that the GOP would immediately attack it, and thus cripple a surveillance-state program he could never undo himself without being savaged by the right as soft on terror and a secret Muslim and a terrorist sympathizer?
Think about it. I’d say there’s at least a 10% chance this is completely true…