Posted on 03/06/2009 2:44:41 PM PST by Delacon
Did you feel it? The political ground shifting beneath President Barack Obama since his speech last week to Congress? It's been downhill since and I'm not referring mainly to the Dow Jones record-setting dive. The pivot point of the shift was the speech, or rather what the speech did to the evolving public narrative of Obama.
Let's review:
* Since the first of the year, Rush Limbaugh's audience has exploded , according to Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, even as his daily assaults on Obama have intensified. The conservative Talk Radio maestro has become the most listened-to radio personality in America since before Paul Harvey.
Demand for his air time hs suddenly become so intense, Limbaugh told The Examiner's Byron York earlier today, that his network sold 80 percent as much advertising in January 2009 as it did in all of 2008, and expects to sell-out the year by the end of March. That was before Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel launched an explicit counter-attack against Limbaugh that seems only to be making him bigger.
* Glenn Beck's imminently forgettable presence on CNN has been transformed, according to The Los Angeles Times, by his move to Fox News where his main theme has been variations on this question - What in Heaven's name does Barack Obama think he is doing to America? Beck has a tough time slot to win big ratings because he's in the middle of evening drive-time, but in a very short time at Fox his audience is now exceeded only by Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity.
* Obama remains personally popular with the public, but worries and even outright opposition to some of his cornerstone proposals is growing. Democrats in Congress are even beginning to express in public print their worries that Obama has reached too far with the $787 billion economic stimulus package, the $410 billion omnibus spending bill and the $3.6 trillion budget proposal (and the trillions more in additional bailouts, loan guarantees, "tax cuts" that are really just grants, and other spending accountrements of Leviathan Unleashed.
* A devastatng conservative case against Obama is coming together rapidly. Two influential columns this week tell the tale: On Thursday, Daniel Henninger offers this crucial observation in a WSJ piece otherwise devoted to asking why Republicans aren't more eagerly and quickly taking advantage of the fact the Obama Democrats have all but declared war on the 75 percent of the U.S. economy that is private:
"Beyond the stock market, there is a reason why, despite much goodwill toward his presidency, the Obama response to the faltering economy has left many feeling undone. There isn't much in his plan to stir the national soul. It's about "sacrifice" now so that we can live for a future of small electric cars and windmills. This may move the Democratic Party's faith communities, but it cannot revive a great nation. If the Democrats want to embrace market failure as a basis for their ideology, let them have it. As politics, it's a downer."
The second column appeared today in The Washington Post and was written by Charles Krauthammer. Obama's mastery of public speaking has served to deflect attention away from the details of what he is actually proposing, which is based, according to Krauthammer, on a fundamental deception: Obama summons vision of catastrophe that are the result of too little government regulation of the financial markets and he offers as a solution vastly more government regulation of .... health care, energy and education.
"The 'day of reckoning' has now arrived. And because 'it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament,' Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.
"Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people," Krauthammer said.
Worse, Krauthammer says, is that Obama tries to have it both ways, with the alleged errors of deregulation being compounded into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression by America's failure to nationalize health care, shift our economy to alternative energy sources and give everybody a free pass to college.
In other words, Obama is trying to make the cause and the cure synonymous. "Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core," Krauthammer said.
I would only disagree that the Obama deception represents a clever political strategy. The deception represents the fundamental flaw in the Obama strategy and indeed that of the Washington liberals who are racing to enact as much of their agenda as possible before the 2010 election.
The speech to Congress was the pivot point. Before the speech, Obama was protected by a kind of political equivalent of the Star Trek Shield. His symbolizing of an historic milestone, which alone moved millions of white voters to his column, combined with his soaring rhetoric, which negated any criticism from John McCain and other Republicans of the substance of Obama's proposals.
But the magnetism of the historicity of his moment began fading once the economic stimulus, the omnibus and the budget were on the table. As people focused more on the details and how they didn't square with what they thought he had promised during the campaign, the soaring rhetoric lost much of its power. It may even now be approaching a net negative because it throws so much more light on the inaequacies of the policies.
And so the ground has shifted and the essential narrative is changing. Before, supporting Obama was an act of personal and national affirmation made all the more attractive by the seeming reasonableness of his policy proposals. In short, Obama made himself a comfortable and reassuring choice because he made it "safe" to vote for him.
But now the mask is off and the disconnect between rhetoric and reality is emerging as the dominant driver of the Obama narrative. The contrast is no longer between the young, personable, historic candidate Obama and a creaky, cranky old Republican White Guy, it's between what America thought it was getting in a President Obama (cool, reasonable and above partisanship) and what it now sees as the reality of a President Obama (government spending out of control, broken promises, more bureaucrats, etc. etc.).
Put another way - not what we were promised.
You don't think there's enough buyers remorse out there to make a difference?
Some of the people can be fooled some of the time.
That would make a great bumper sticker.
“WE ARE ALL IN TROUBLE”
I agree. I’m glad that Obama opposition is getting traction, but we can’t vote out Federal justices.
“Unplug his teleprompter and save the damn country!”
I wish someone would hack the teleprompter.
Now that would be funny
He's pregnant?
Can we just call him the new and improved...
CHIMP?!
Or would labeling a Democrat POTUS as a stupid primate be unallowable?
LOL!!!
“By July 23, he will no longer be Presi[d]ent”
What’s happening on July 23?
well they've cast around looking for an object of hatred they can get the people to rally against. They decided upon old Rush, but since it backfired they will go after someone else, say a group of people, knuckle draggers clinging to something perhaps?
It ...IS... that scary!
We have the MIL living on our property, even built her a house to live in, with a garage because she didn't want the coyote peeing on her tires.
She votedfor the big O. Now I had fun telling her "community service" is for everyone, what will you be doing? and also, Obama says you have to just suck it up and die, no medical care for you! lol
I think that the constant MSM drumbeat for 8 long years is what people were so tired of. (That is, people who don't pay much attention.) They would have voted for a cardboard cutout as long as it didn't have an "R" next to its name.
And that's what they got: a cardboard cutout with big, stupid, floppy ears and a teleprompter puppetting what Big Brother tells him to say.
Wow... Well... Look at here choices. On her left hand she had obama and on her right hand she had mcskidmark. What's an old lady to do with those choices? I myself was ready to write in Newt, or Rush, or Hannity, or Savage, or someone - anyone before voting for either of those two chumps. I am tired of being forced to vote for a lesser of two evils especially when both candidates are wicked, evil men. Had mcskidmark not nominated Palin as his running mate he would not have received my vote. I personally can't blame a sweet little old lady for being confussed. Can you show me the difference between the two parties at this time?
Exactly. Many people in this country are apolitical. You don't reach these people with idealogy.
bookmark
From what I have been able to find out S-CHIP will add on 40 cents per cigar. The dims originaly wanted to tack on $4, but (beleive it or not) Charley Rangle got it back down to 40 cents. Guess Charley is a long asher as well.
S-CHIP is that dim thing about “free chillren health inshonch” where they designate a “chillins bees to 28 years old”.
Yep, buy ‘em up before April Fools Day!
NOW....the elibibility issue of BO will be a now issue to make this fraud resign....he’ll be forced to do this. Money talks BS walks............
The ZerobamaRama will be short lived.
I don't care if he takes himself down or it there is a populist uprising to take him down (and hopefully Pelosi & Reid as well). I just want to see that lying POS socialist-fascist-commie usurper thrown out of the WH as soon as possible... I don't think our country can afford to wait until 2010 or 2012.
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