Posted on 08/23/2009 7:08:59 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s no big mystery why President Obama’s poll numbers have dropped like a scorching potato on a summer day in Houston: He’s stinking it up. The man came into office with a 72% approval rating. Nearly everyone gave him the benefit of the doubt. Six months of flimflam have soured all except his most adoring sycophants.
The press still loves Barack Obama. Enough said.
For everyone else, for those who hoped for change, disappointment mounts. Maegan Carberry expresses the frustrations of young Obama voters:
To single out health care is myopic, when what’s really happening is a collective re-evaluation of Obama’s delivery on his campaign promises to our generation. Young people, many of whom were first-time political participants in ‘08, are often not seasoned in the way governing works. After disappointments like failed bipartisanship on the stimulus bill, lip service on torture, a perplexing stance on gay marriage that even Dick Cheney’s got right, half-hearted transparency and use of new media tools, and an ambiguously undefined and possibly unwinnable war in Afghanistan, we’re frustrated. We signed on for change in Washington, and our leader is not cracking down on the Democratic Congress and its futile leadership, which has disappointed us for almost a decade.
Strap on your boots, liberals. It’s about to get worse. An Air America host called President Obama a “charming liar.” That’s being charitable. By years end, the word “charming” will be dropped.
To Liberals and Democrats hoping for the socialist promised land, conservatives feel your pain. They’ve been there. Hell, they’re still there. Those who voted for Republicans hoping for sensible government, fiscal restraint and less intrusion got none of it — even when Republicans controlled the House, Senate and Executive branches. Can you say Drug Plan to buy off seniors and drug companies? Can you say TARP?
The reason President Obama is tanking so quickly, though, is that he has a problem that President Bush didn’t have: Candidate Obama promised the world, sun, stars, and moon to everyone. People pinned their hopes and dreams on him. He stayed vague and hope-n-changy enough that all people felt reassured when he spoke to them. The problem is, he said whatever worked to whatever crowd he stood before. Or rather, his words were suitably bland that people projected their desires on his words. They heard what they wanted to hear, but what was he saying?
George W. Bush governed exactly how he campaigned. The term “compassionate conservatism” was wince-inducing. We believe being conservative is compassionate. When President Bush “reached across the isle” to Teddy Kennedy, it seemed the height of naivete. The split was coming, and it did. And to burn credibility with the base over education reform, of all things…
Still, the magnanimous ways and the mushy center were classic Blue Blood Republican and for all the twang, which so irritated liberals, President Bush governed and was motivated by noblesse oblige. He campaigned this way. No surprises.
So President Obama has a problem that President Bush didn’t: deception or delusion. But more than that, President Obama comes into his presidency after Democrats spent years in the wilderness nursing notions of a stolen presidency. They feel owed, man. They are entitled to some legislation going their way for once.
And actually, President Obama has another problem: American values don’t mesh with liberal values. President Obama campaigned sounding centrist and moderate even though his Senate record was the most liberal of any of his peers. President Obama campaigned on fiscal restraint. He promised to right the Republican wrongs. It’s difficult to stifle a guffaw, but people bought it. Swing voters and independents believed him. They believed that a Democrat Congress and President would actually be sensible and responsible.
The Democrats pushed through a pork-laden, special-interest awarding stimulus bill that benefited no one besides political cronies. This was Nancy Pelosi’s gift to the big corporate Democrat donors. On election night, I talked to a prominent liberal blogger who said,”Well, we’ll just have to keep big special interests out of the White House.” I laughed out loud and said, “Good luck with that. They’re already there. They’re your problem now.”
But really, the political class and the various special interest parasites sucking off the American taxpayer are everyone’s problem. The Tea Party movement was not born of President Barack Obama, much as the left would like to think so. Discontent raged around the TARP bailouts after years of excessive spending and Americans were helpless to stop it. It took me hours to unwind the root of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mess, and as fear-inducing bank failures struck me, the bailouts couldn’t assure that they wouldn’t fail anyway. And, in fact, many have. Meanwhile, the remaining banks prop up real estate, but that will soon end and then what?
And now, the President and Congress want to push through Health Care Reform, that won’t help people’s health, cares little for the American taxpayer, and is anything but reform. And while California and Michigan face 15% unemployment rates and higher in some cities/industries, these same people want to raise taxes on Americans and kill the energy industry with Cap and Trade. It’s sheer insanity. It’s like the politicians live in some dream state where the reality of paying the bills doesn’t exist. It’s like they believe the American people will lay down and consent to a vast redistribution of hard-earned wealth when they’ve already lost so much to the hands of a wrong-headed governance.
But that’s exactly where politicians live. It’s a bubble land of no consequences. The only thing that engenders fear is the prospect of losing personal power. But even that concerns them little as they rig the system so that incumbents can enjoy permanent places of power. They spend the taxpayer’s money like tax revenue falls from magical, ever-producing gold trees. Americans thought this new administration would be rational. It’s not just more of the same. It’s worse.
And while the Democrats hatch plans to bury America in a tax and regulatory burden never before seen, where are the Republicans? They’re where they’ve been for years: Tremulous, attempting to curry favor with the press and with Democrats. Still, President Obama tries to blame these classic enablers for obstruction. It would be laughable if the charge wasn’t so insane. The Republicans have zero power. None. Their mismanagement when they had the reins has sent them into the political wilderness and yet they refuse to even fight rhetorically now when they have nothing to lose. The war of ideas is being fought by an out-of-power Republican Governor from the furthest reaches of America. Sarah Palin is the only one willing to call B.S. on the nonsense in plain language.
The Republicans worry about being called obstructionists instead of worrying that they have no core principles that they can, without hypocrisy, champion or defend. Believe something already! And then, vote a value without undercutting it by amoral behavior. Yeah, that might happen. The only chance of it happening is an engaged populace holding their feet to the fire.
The people, at long last, rise. The political class needs guidance, to put it mildly. Basically, things have been good enough and people have been busy enough that they stopped holding those entrusted with the keys to the law and treasury accountable. That time is over. All politicians, both Republicans and Democrats, would like the grassroots people to just go away. It seems evident that these folks are just getting warmed up.
Call them the mob, terrorists, haters, un-American, disloyal, treasonous, immoral, racist, deranged. They’re not going away. They are Americans. They deserve better than what they’re getting from the ruling class.
Tonight, a friend tweeted this timely quote: “It is the responsibility of the patriot to protect his country from it’s government.” – Thomas Paine
The government needs to relearn its place.
I think you are on the right track by honing in on taxes. When those leeches in DC figured out how to tax and withhold, it was the beginning of the end for the electorate’s say over their own lives. The current bunch is the most arrogant and dismissive yet. Pelosi is right out of a bad dream.
Good post, I think the author makes an excellent point about Bush governing as he said he would. In fact, Bush made an honest effort to “change the tone” and be “bi-partisan”, but it did not survive the actions he took after 9/11.
And for that I don’t blame Bush, but the left and the dems. They saw Bush becoming very popular and they determined that he must be destroyed. Not that Bush doesn’t deserve some blame for his own failures, but mostly he deserves blame for not fighting back against the campaign of hatred against him, which started before he ran for re-election.
I really thought on 9/11 that we’d never have a democratic president again in my lifetime, now we have the big O. He’s enough of a left wing, soft on terror, soft on crime, democrat for 3 lifetimes at least.
Hopefully after him we’ll be done with them.
Excellent.
Citizens need to take back both Academe and the media, as well as Washington. And unfortunately, Until Citizens take back both Academia and the media, a corrupt Washington may continue in power a while longer. Tho' the Zippo may be setting fire to himself a bit quicker than his puppetmaster intended.
That's Three enemies.
I was curious about the Paine quote and have been searching, but have not been able to find any context or source for the qoute.
“We have two enemies to freedom in this country today - Liberal communist politicians and their enabling media.
I believe that’s wrong. The two enemies are:
1) Liberal communist politicians and their enabling media, and
2) The current GOP leadership.
What say you?”
I believe that there is a number three that should be more prominent that either of the first two.
It’s the bureaucracy. Or, literally, “government by desks”, the faceless people who run the various organizations of government. These are the ones who literally feed off of the life blood of our nation. Taxes on our productivity.
And quite frankly it’s obvious if you just stand back and look at it. They enforce the laws and make regulations. And lately they are the ones who have been proposing newer laws in conjunction with the Mega-industries.
Keep something small and you can manage it. Once it becomes large it becomes slow, lethargic and unmanageable. This applies to business as well as government.
You are correct, how many time has it been discovered that lines have been changed in laws and bills and some faceless bureaucrat did it and never was held accountable. Government has grown to the point were someone can walk the halls of congress for twenty years carrying a damn clip board and never do a damn thing and retire at 80 grand are more per year. They been doing that in the pentagon for a long time now.
This is an excellent article that needs to be distributed far and wide. I’ll do my share.
bttt
“The government needs to relearn its place.”
I believe that message is beginning to resonate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rRE5UK6NQU
Thanks.
That Marine kicked butt!
Paine was the most radical of all the Founders. He took on everyone.
Not to sound like a curmudgeon or anything, but as a member of the 28%, I actually listened to what the man said and had said in the past, and saw no reason to doubt that he would be exactly what he has shown himself to be.
The article dances amid bromides and refuses to state a single actual principle.
The people want all the hopey changee good stuff without any of the mean paying for it. Then they can't understand why the glad handing pols fail to give them both.
If the people don't want to pay for the boondoggles, all they have to do is vote for men promising to zero them all out. Instead they smear every such person as mean or as a hypocrite and vote for the hopey changee liars.
It is reality that the populace can't handle, not the pols. Sure the pols are no better. But realism is nowhere to be found among the politically powerful, whether pols or the even more powerful voters.
A few experts know what is actually feasible, and everyone dumps on them and calls them names.
At bottom, the frustration is simply this - political power cannot avoid reality in the slightest particular. But men are interested in it for nothing else than escaping from reality.
And, my comment to the "Buyers Remorse" Obama brain dead voters still stands. There are Millions of them, and they should be shamed.
Fair enough?
‘Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed-time of Continental union, faith and honour. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound would enlarge with the tree, and posterity read in it full grown characters.
“The current GOP leadership”
Who would that be? What leadership?
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