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/
National security. Barak Obama has fashioned a successful campaign around the “novel” idea of negotiating away our differences with such thugs as Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (Iran) and Osama Bin Laden (Al Qaida). Except for the serious risk it represents to the country, it would be fascinating to see how long his commitment to palaver with our enemies would last, should he actually gain the office.
Experience shows that no outrage exceeds that of a committed “negotiator” whose overtures to peace and comity have been rudely rebuffed with actual violence. My guess is that Mr. Obama would turn into an “avenging angel” - far beyond anything Mr. Bush has done - once the scales fell from his eyes. Only the danger of actually letting Mr. Obama into the Oval Office restrains me from saying, “let’s vote him in as a social experiment.”
Mr. Obama’s high-minded insistence that negotiation is a novel idea that has not been tried appeals to the Moron Vote. Only the clueless and the appallingly ignorant would buy this line. Negotiating with one’s enemies is, in fact, an old idea that has been repeatedly tried and found wanting. Its limitation is the honesty (or lack thereof) of the people one negotiates with.
Japanese ambassadors were in actual talks with Secretary of State Cordell Hull at the very moment when Japanese torpedo planes struck our Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941. His promises notwithstanding, Hitler had no intention of granting “peace in our time” (or any other time) to the British and French at Munich (October 1938). He later contemptuously called them “worms”. Hitler promptly broke his word and took over the rest of Czechoslovakia (March 1939), launching World War II just six months later. “That man lied to me,” Neville Chamberlain famously complained after Hitler annexed the part of Czechoslovakia he had sworn to “protect”.
Of a piece with Mr. Obama’s claims that his brilliant new negotiating skills will obviate the need for war is his oft-stated intention to recall our troops from Iraq without delay, whether the job is done or not. The far left loves this, and the Moron Vote sits reverently at his feet while he spins his Sermon on the Mount yarns about no more war. But, as Lincoln famously said, calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one. Just so, saying we won’t need to fight any more doesn’t make it so - unless we plan on unilateral surrender.
Unfortunately for Mr. Obama, this is the weakest part of his entire messianic presentation. Americans have never developed a taste for surrender.
http://www.ahherald.com/content/view/4258/28/