Will The Senate Be Obama’s Waterloo?

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Will The Senate Be Obama’s Waterloo?
Shout Bits Blog ^ | 6-27-09 | Shout Bits

Posted on 06/28/2009 6:52:43 AM PDT by Shout Bits

Now that The House has passed the single worst piece of legislation in US history, the Cap-and-Trade Bill, a showdown in the Senate has been set. If freedom prevails and The Senate fails to pass this bill, the US will see the high water mark of Pres. Obama's honeymoon power. Like Pres. Clinton before him, Obama has overreached and the backlash could be substantial.

While Obama is popular, the polls show some dark clouds on the horizon. Obama is a highly divisive figure for a newly minted President, more divisive than was Pres. Bush following his controversial election in 2000. Also, Obama's policies are not popular – union card check, auto bailouts, single payer health care, and, currently, Cap-and-Trade. Because of his charm, people simply want to like Obama, so he is not equated with his socialist policies. Obama has cultivated this advantage by taking a hands-off approach to such things as the impossibly wasteful stimulus bill. Eventually, however, all Presidents become the sum of their policies, and their popularity falls in line.

Obama stepped off his triangulation cloud to lobby for the Cap-and-Trade bill, which may be his undoing. CNN, along with most major papers, described the House passage as a "triumph" for Obama. Obama lobbied hard to bring wavering Democrats in line for this bill. Even though Speaker Pelosi pulled out all the procedural stops (the ones she chastised the GOP for using), the bill would not have passed without Obama's explicit backing. While the botched stimulus act belonged to Democrats in general, the Cap-and-Trade bill belongs to Obama, his first controversial bill.

Controversial indeed. While the CBO estimates that the typical family will suffer only a $175 annual increase in energy costs due to the bill, that figure is the tip of the global-warming iceberg. As this blog has pointed out previously, everything everyone consumes contains a large component of energy expense. Every human activity consumes energy, and those energy costs find their way into the costs of every product and service. Worse still, even though the US is the most energy efficient country in the world, economic expansion remains in proportion to increases in energy consumption. The history of modern prosperity is the history of exploiting low cost energy to allow production. The Cap-and-Trade bill would essentially cap energy consumption, and thereby eliminate economic growth and job creation. As a special treat, the bill would create a trade war with China by slapping tariffs on goods from countries without Cap-and-Trade.

So, Obama has tied his wagon to a bill that would eliminate economic growth, create a trade war (and hence a new great depression),and drive up the cost of everything. He is surely fortunate that the Republicans are too weak to swat a fly, because they are being served a generational opportunity. Yet, like Bill Clinton, Obama may be brought down by his own overreaching, Republicans or not.

Clinton's so-called Hillary Care bill was his undoing. Like Obama's Cap-and-Trade bill, Hillary Care was overreaching, and its details were unpalatable to Americans. Hillary Care came out strong, but died in the Senate, where its cautious procedural rules allow the Republican minority to debate the bill's ugly socialist details. The same will be true for Obama. The Senate lacks anywhere near the votes for cloture on the Cap-and-Trade bill. While Pelosi was able to keep the Cap-and-Trade bill's ugly details a secret until a few hours before the vote, Sen. Reid will be forced to allow a public debate. The GOP will then be able to show Americans the bill's true radical agenda. In short, nobody expects the House bill to pass The Senate. Expect Obama's approval ratings to fall into the mid 50's as a result.

Once Bill Clinton met his Waterloo in the Senate with Hillary Care, he moved on to govern from the center-left. The Clinton years became, surprisingly, a golden age of limited government, free trade, and prosperity. These good times were largely due to divided government and a President weakened by his perjury scandal, but they were also a reflection of Clinton's personality. Clinton clearly wanted to be loved above all else, even at the expense of abandoning his socialized medicine dream in favor of declaring that the "era of big government is over." Clinton was reelected, and most people remember him fondly.

Obama lacks Clinton's acceptance character flaw. For all the talk of his pragmatism, Obama comes off as a hard left ideologue. With advisers like Rahm Emanuel, who makes Karl Rove look like a pussycat, Obama will not roll right when his signature legislation is defeated or gutted in the Senate. While moral flexibility – the ability to lie and mean it – is a problem for regular folks, it is a boon for politicians.

Obama will face a showdown in The Senate over his Cap-and-Trade bill, and the bill's likely defeat will be the defining moment of his term. He either will become a left wing laughingstock or a more moderate crowd pleaser. Either way, we will gain the first real insight into his character.