If the purpose is to repudiate a class of followers, then I think it is, or at very least, fits well enough. And the purpose here appears very much to be to repudiate the class, to demonstrate his independence from them and their reliance on him rather than the other way around, as I described. This is to impress the next round of power-brokers up the ladder, as part of attaining the next level of power. For example, when Newsweek's Jonathan Alter talked about Senator Obama showing "strength" by flipping on FISA (I discussed it already very briefly here), this is what I think he felt and why and how he felt it, even if he didn't articulate it and couldn't rationally explain it. (His explanation contradicts itself; rationally, it's incoherent.)