Rush Limbaugh had a grand old time with that on Thursday:
Now, folks, I don’t want to nitpick here, but I’m gonna nitpick because we’re told this guy’s smarter than everybody else in the room. We’re told for three years that nobody could keep up with this guy, he’s so far ahead of us that it’s pointless to even try to understand. We should just try to position ourselves so that we bask in the glow as well, right?
“Don’t make me call my bluff.” I thought that the whole point — and I don’t play poker. I know how, but I haven’t played poker in a long time — but I always thought that the point of a bluff was to hide that you’re bluffing. “Don’t make me call my bluff”?
The Republicans called Dayton’s bluff. Dayton was bluffing, the governor of Minnesota. Cantor would be the one to say, “Don’t make me call your bluff, Mr. President.” That’s who shoulda made the statement. But Obama making it, “Don’t make me call my bluff”? (laughing) Like Glenn Reynolds wrote, “I’d love to pay poker with this guy tonight.” He doesn’t know what he’s doing. (…)
I don’t know why he didn’t say it right. We’re living off an image. We’re living off of a crafted, manipulated image of the guy. You take the teleprompter away and he’s lost, you don’t know what the next word’s gonna be ’cause he doesn’t.
For the Most Gifted Orator in Human History, the president these days speaks largely in clichés, most of which he doesn’t seem to be quite on top of. “Eric, don’t call my bluff,” he sternly reprimanded the GOP’s Eric Cantor. Usually, if you’re bluffing, the trick is not to announce it upfront. But, in fact, in his threat to have Granny eating dog food by Labor Day, Obama was calling his own bluff. The giant bluff against the future that is government spending.
