Finally got the article: I will post two parts of the article not already posted.
Gas, oil, energy and quality of life. As I write this, oil has hit $137 a barrel on world markets. Mr. Obama has joined other lawmakers in bashing oil companies for “obscene” profits. He wants to tax their “windfall profits” and spend the money on “alternative energy sources”. Yet he is opposed (as most Democrats are) to using nuclear power or coal (of which we have hundreds of years’ supply) to generate power. He will not allow oil recovery from shale, which experts believe might contain some 800 billion barrels of oil. And he is unalterably opposed to drilling in either the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (where some 10 billion barrels of oil can be tapped) or off our coasts (where experts believe potential reserves of at least 18 billion barrels lie).
Mr. Obama’s positions and oppositions will not produce a drop of new oil, or lower the price by a farthing, or produce the reasonably priced power Americans need. Yet millions of voters - not to mention legions of enthralled reporters - think he walks on water. One is left to infer that his followers either (1) want higher gas prices or (2) are too stupid to realize that their “messiah’s” policies will do nothing about either energy supply or price - two of Americans’ biggest worries.
Mr. Obama has gone on record saying that we can’t expect to keep driving SUVs, eat as much as we want and set our thermostats at 72 degrees, and have the rest of the world say, “OK.” Does he think Americans won’t notice these declarations? Or is he so convinced of his own infallibility that he believes voters will swarm to his camp anyway? Color me perplexed. Other observers are more definite in their opposition, like the blogger Patstand who wrote, “Wake up people! Scary stuff coming out of the mouth of Barack Hussein Obama. Who is HE to tell us what we can drive and what we can eat?” It’s a good question to which I have no answer.
What I do know is that scarce, high-priced gas and promises of a diminished quality of life have knocked two presidents out of the box in the last 1/3 century. Richard Nixon was the first. The conventional story is that Watergate brought him down, but that’s too thin. The real issue was gas. (For your car - not the kind Congress produces.) The Watergate burglary happened in mid-1972. Nobody cared much about it until 1974, after oil tripled and gas doubled in price. Congressional Democrats used the Watergate break-in as a springboard, and Mr. Nixon was toast.
Gas in 1979 was as expensive as now, adjusted for inflation. Jimmy Carter said we should turn out the lights, turn down the heat, and put up with high gas prices - and he told us to quit whining about it. He scolded us - something voters don’t appreciate. In 1980 they gave Mr. Carter the boot and elected the candidate of optimism, Ronald Reagan. After the feds stopped trying to allocate gas supplies and control prices, supplies stabilized and gas prices dropped.
http://www.ahherald.com/content/view/4258/28/
The Economy... is where Mr. Obama is most clearly going after the Moron Vote. He is smart to do it because it won for Bill Clinton in 1992. Coming out of the 1990-’91 Gulf War, our economy had hit a downturn. Unemployment was 7.3%. Things were not good, but not really terrible in historic terms.
Mr. Clinton brought voters’ niggling dissatisfaction to a boil by repeating the preposterous charge that we were in the “worst economy since the Great Depression” - knowing that a large faction of the public would not know this was complete nonsense. President Bush declined to dispute it, thinking the voters could not possibly believe so silly a statement. But he was wrong. The strategy drew the Moron Vote in droves and was a winner. With some help from Ross Perot, Mr. Clinton sneaked in with just 43% of the popular vote. Soon after he took office, the media began to report that (surprise!) the economy wasn’t as bad as we thought it was.
Today, Mr. Obama is selling the same snake oil to voters who wouldn’t know the Great Depression from the Great Gatsby. They resonate with Mr. Obama’s mantra of “change” without having any idea what change he would bring, what it would cost, or how it would affect them. I’m not the first commentator to note that Mr. Obama wants to take us not forward, but backward - back to the New Deal, higher taxes, less economic freedom, a managed economy and the Fairness Doctrine. Millions of voters evidently think that sounds super. (The Moron Vote rises again.)
Mr. Obama distrusts private business, and has what columnist Cal Thomas calls a “can’t do” attitude about the future. He believes the ordinary person simply cannot make it without big government’s help. Actually, Mr. Obama distrusts not only business: he distrusts the American people. Are we the indomitable people who built the greatest nation and the wealthiest, most robust economy in history? No! We are pitiable, wretched victims of a failed government and a “broken” system who need his “ministry” in order to avoid ruin.
Another aspect of Mr. Obama’s appeal to the Moron Vote is his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement. Labor unions claim it has drained jobs from old-line industries. In fact, NAFTA has opened numerous markets to American goods - thus creating thousands of new American jobs. Mr. Obama is pandering to unions whose support he must have in order to do well in the general election. Since NAFTA has the force of law, only political dunces could buy his promise to “renegotiate” NAFTA in order to protect union jobs from the competition of imports.
Democrats like to characterize American society as divided between winners and losers in “the lottery of life”. Those who have worked hard and succeeded in making good livings and accumulating some wealth must “give back” - i.e., subsidize those who didn’t work as hard, didn’t get educated, and didn’t make wise choices in their lives. Liberals sweep inconvenient facts about personal responsibility under the rug by claiming that these “victims” rolled snake-eyes in the great, cosmic crapshoot.
The irony is that Mr. Obama’s policies would not empower the down-and-out, but would permanently prevent them from improving their status. Creation of wealth - not envy-taxes, income-transfer or welfare - enables economic advancement. This seems beyond the ken of Mr. Obama’s followers. Indeed, it seems beyond Mr. Obama, himself.
http://www.ahherald.com/content/view/4258/28/