Yeah, we know. You millions of Obama acolytes freezing your tuchises off today liked the Inaugural Address. We heard your approval, loud and clear. But enough with the cheering already, D.C. It's been hours. Time for a new take. We want to know what conservatives think of the speech. Out, damn hope! Bring on the haters!
In that spirit, here's a roundup of conservative bloggers' reactions to the speech. Brace yourself: even some of them are (gasp!) cheering, too.
“A very good speech,” proclaimed Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard. Obama didn't revise American history to suit present celebrations, he said, as did others on the stage with him. "I think there was a lot to like there for those whose greatest concern is that Obama is soft--that he doesn't appreciate the role violence has played in forging our democracy." He quibbled that Obama refused to use the word "victory" in his discussion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but acknowledged it was a minor point.
The team at National Review's The Corner had mixed opinions, but they skewed positive. Charles Kesler said ho-hum to the responsibility theme Obama chose, but gave props to his effort to take back patriotism and religion from their seemingly exclusively conservative domain. “President Obama’s speech was interesting, dignified, and unmemorable, like so many inaugural addresses,” he wrote, but gave Obama credit for handling "with grace" his unique place in history. Ramesh Ponnuru thought Obama a very compelling performer, but found the speech itself pedestrian. Jay Nordlinger admired its brevity, but ranted about its indirect slights to Bush, which he found quite rude. In the most ringing endorsement of all, Michael Knox Beran called the speech a home run. "On the whole I was impressed by the new President’s tone, by his précis of the American tradition, by the tribute he paid to our forebears and to those 'guardians of our liberty' who are making sacrifices today, and by my sense that he himself is acutely conscious of the preciousness of the legacy with which he has been entrusted."
Michelle Malkin had few kind words for Obama and his supporters, but cooed over the musical acts by Aretha Franklin, Itzhak Perlman, and Yo-Yo Ma. Her whole take on the speech: “’Transform’ this and that. Wallet feeling emptier by the second.”
Mitt Romney chimed in with some generally positive feedback at the Wall Street Journal’s Washington Wire. “Barack Obama gave a speech from the middle. He once again is communicating that he intends to govern from the middle and not from the wing,” he wrote. “It was a speech that could be offered by a leader from either party and that’s good.”
At Redstate, Leon H. Wolf expressed his hope that Barack Obama will be a failure as president, despite many of his fellow conservatives’ inclinations to give the new guy the benefit of the doubt. When the trains run on time, he reasons, people are less likely to give their presidents a tough time about their moral failings, which he says Barack Obama has in abundance.
“Quite good for what it was,” Paul Mirengoff at Powerline wrote, citing decent text and a strong oratory. The vision of postpartisan harmony is bunk, he maintains, but he’s confident that Obama believes more in his own greatness than in his own rhetoric. When it comes to politicians, that, at least, is a known quality.
Update: I slighted Jay Nordlinger by failing to provide a link to his commentary, as he noted here. It was an inadvertent mishap. His original commentary can be found here.
