Why The Great And Growing Backlash? (Victor Davis Hanson On The Scott Brown Win Alert)

National Review ^ | 1/20/2010 | Victor Davis Hanson

[goldstategop]

Dream up a gargantuan backlash against Barack Obama’s left-wing gospel, and you still could not invent the notion of a relatively unknown, conservative Scott Brown knocking off an Obama-endorsed, liberal, female attorney in liberal Massachusetts — in a race to fill the seat once held by Ted Kennedy.

If a liberal senatorial candidate can be defeated in Massachusetts, eleven months after the Obama hope-and-change blitzkrieg, it is hard to believe that any liberal seat is necessarily safe anywhere.

So the real story is not a populist backlash, but a growing populist backlash, whose ultimate nature and magnitude are as yet unknown. What’s going on?

BUYING JOBS? Voters are sick and tired of a terrible year of big spending and big deficits — especially the sight of Obama and his congressional allies almost daily talking breezily about spending what we do not have.

Voters went for the hope-and-change Obama in part because he promised fiscal sobriety after the Bush $500 billion deficit. Instead, in utterly cynical fashion, Obama trumped that red ink four times over. In the process, he developed a terrible habit of promising favored constituencies a hundred billion here, a hundred billion there as if it were all paper money — rather than real borrowed currency that will have to be confiscated in the future from the beleaguered taxpayer. It only makes it worse than the more the administration borrowed, printed, and spent, the higher unemployment rose and the lower economic activity plummeted.

Most have had enough of pie-in-the-sky talk of massive new health-care entitlements, cap-and-trade taxes and regulation, more stimulus, and more takeovers of private enterprise. The country is broke and the people want to pay off, not incur more, crushing debt. What got us into the mess was too much borrowing, skyrocketing debt, and reckless spending — not too many balanced budgets and too much lean government.

PROPHETS CAN’T MISLEAD? No politician quite gets a pass for deception and prevarication. Obama in his narcissism thought his sonorous rhetoric made him exempt from a “read my lips” or “I didn’t have sex with that woman” moment. It didn’t.

People heard his serial promises about airing the health-care debate on C-SPAN, his new-transparency/no-lobbyist vows, and his monotonous boasts to close down Guantanamo within a year. All that is now “inoperative.” The problem was not just that Obama made promises that he broke, but that he made them so frequently and so vehemently — and so cavalierly broke them. That brazen campaign deception is problematic for a politician, but proves fatal for a self-appointed messiah.

A CESSATION OF CORRUPTION We went from a Republican “culture of corruption” to a liberal cesspool of corruption. Sen. Chris Dodd lectures Wall Street while he gets sweetheart loans and vacation-home deals. Few could make up a story that the nation’s top tax lawmaker, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, is a tax dodger, and the nation’s top tax enforcer, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, is an even more egregious tax dodger. When the Democratic Senate leadership started buying health-care votes at $300 million a clip, our Congress became little more than the praetorian guard, auctioning off its support to any wannabe late Roman emperor. The idea of a muckraking Obama nominating Tom Daschle as his Health Secretary — the liberal populist who skips out of thousands of dollars in taxes on his free corporate limousine service — was the stuff of satire.

BUSH REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DID DO IT No one likes a serial whiner. It has been a year now — and Obama still blames George W. Bush ad nauseam. He did it in Massachusetts again — and on the eve of the election, no less. Blaming the past for the mistakes of the present gets old quickly. And when one adds in the constant What’s the Matter With Kansas? brand of condescension about naïve yokels not knowing what’s good for them, it gets even worse.

Yet Obama still pontificates that angry deluded voters will “suddenly” come to appreciate how he rammed health care down their otherwise ignorant throats: “The American people will suddenly learn that this bill does things they like and doesn’t do things that people have been trying to say it does. . . . The worst fears will prove groundless. And the American people’s hope for a fair shake from their insurance companies — for quality, affordable health care they need — will finally be realized.”

Good luck with that, O philosopher king!

WALL STREET POPULISTS Elite liberals are not good class warriors. Factor in multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi’s government mega-jet or Barack Obama’s various overseas junkets or the big Wall Street money that went into Obama’s near billion-dollar campaign coffers, and it is hard to take seriously Obama’s constant war against “them.” The voters have figured out that their president likes the elite plutocracy and the lower middle classes, but not so much the wannabe rich who aspire to cross his hated $250,000 income threshold — at which point suddenly they become unpatriotic, unwilling to pay their fair shares, and reluctant to spread the wealth around.

It is not particularly smart to constantly demonize the entrepreneurial classes, promise to raise income, payroll, health-care, and inheritance taxes on them, and expand government regulations — and then wonder why they are not creating more jobs.

ELMER GANTRY Devotees turn on false prophets with a special vengeance. Obama is beginning to grate. His flip-the-switch-on, evangelical cadences at rallies sound more like a Harvard nerd doing blues imitations than Martin Luther King Jr. Purple-state presidents don’t appoint Van Joneses and Anita Dunns, or turn the NEA into a quid pro quo Ministry of Approved Culture. A healer doesn’t start in on the “rich,” “Wall Street,” the “big” oil companies, drug companies, insurance companies, or “fat-cat bankers” — especially when he has done his best to shake them all down for campaign money, hire as many of them as he can in his own administration, and arrange cut-rate loans, insider deals, bailouts, and guarantees for all of them.

Obama’s populism is beginning to sound more like a bought boxer who belatedly has second thoughts about throwing the fight he previously contracted. In short, Obama’s ideological presidency hinged on his post-racial, post-national mesmerizing presence that reassured reluctant Democrats to vote against their local constituencies.

If cap-and-trade or health care reform polled below 50 percent, a worried congressional supporter could always call in Him to charm bolting voters. But now? We have in a blink gone from Obama as the bankable 10 percent edge, to Obama as a non-factor, to Obama as a real liability. In short, why vote for an agenda as unpopular as its albatross author?

LIKED BY ALL, RESPECTED BY NONE Obama thought the antidote to “smoke ’em out,” “dead or alive,” and “bring ’em on” braggadocio was bowing to the Saudis, promulgating new and undiscovered great moments in Islamic history, and reaching out to Ahmadinejad as he rounded up and beat down reformers in the streets of Tehran.

It’s one thing to accuse Bush of shredding the Constitution, quite another to adopt his anti-terrorism protocols like tribunals, renditions, Predators, intercepts, and wiretaps. Somehow Obama offended his base by such duplicity, and then his opposition by his tokenism of trashing Bush, promising the architect of 9/11 a show trial a few blocks from the former World Trade Center, and using touchy-feely euphemisms to suggest we are not in a war against terrorism emanating from the radical Islamic world.

Ahmadinejad, Assad, Chávez, the Castro Brothers, Putin, and others for the first six months liked us as much as they had little respect for our sycophancy; now they openly show contempt. We accept that obsequiousness cannot earn respect, but it apparently cannot earn affection either.

The best thing that could happen to Barack Obama is more Democratic losses in hodgepodge elections that might yank away our young transfixed Narcissus from his mesmerizing reflecting pool.

Almost immediately after Obama showed his ideological cards last spring, I suggested in the first weeks of his presidency that the bait-and-switch president would soon face a Carter/Clinton moment in which he could either press on with his polarizing ideology, damage his party for a generation, and eventually end up churlish and sneering at the electorate, who did not appreciate his exalted morality and genius — or triangulate and follow the Dick Morris/Bill Clinton model of talking and acting sort of centrist.

Who knows after Obama’s Scott Brown moment? We now may hear once again the old “no more Red State/Blue State” tropes, the stale campaign promises of presidential vetoes, claims of financial sobriety, the return of a “war on terror,” and smaller government

We’re either down to all that — or Obama’s more principled road to perdition.

[SkyPilot]

The voters have figured out that their president likes the elite plutocracy and the lower middle classes, but not so much the wannabe rich who aspire to cross his hated $250,000 income threshold — at which point suddenly they become unpatriotic, unwilling to pay their fair shares, and reluctant to spread the wealth around. It is not particularly smart to constantly demonize the entrepreneurial classes, promise to raise income, payroll, health-care, and inheritance taxes on them, and expand government regulations — and then wonder why they are not creating more jobs.

It goes a little deeper than that, but no one really wants to talk about it.

Obama is, at his core, a blatant racist who is for "his people" and against whites (even though he is half white).

I had a neighbor who was of mixed race (African American father, white German mother).

The man hated half of himself, and did everything he could to favor anything "black" over everything "white."

Obama (and his wife) think of Americans who are of European ancestry as evil, and he thinks they should be looted so that any goods and income they have can be "redistributed" to "his people."

The New Black Panther thugs can waive nightsticks at voters outside a white old folks home used as a polling place, and Obama protects them.

Nothing speaks louder of his racism than this.

He fashions himself as some kind of bastardized black Moses, and it is incredibly dangerous to this nation.

More so than people realize.

[dr_lew]

"They are popularly associated with nuclear power plants. However, this association is misleading, as the same kind of cooling towers are often used at large coal-fired power plants as well." - Wikipedia article on Cooling Tower

This sort of imagery is enough to make one despair that reason can ever prevail in public discourse. Note the black smoke. Can any ignorance be more abysmal?

[dennisw]

VDH eviscerates this phony baloney 0bama and his cheap rap-star rhetoric and boasts
A rap-star tells me global warming is a threat...Yeah I’m sure going to believe that! Cap n trade ...yeah I’ll believe that too

[The_Victor]

bump for a later read.

[kickstart]

I cannot understand how people say they hoped Obungler would be better, and not do the things he has done in his first year. His past record clearly showed me what kind of marxist he would become!

[ThePatriotsFlag]

Posts don’t get better than this one! Perfectly said.

[Lazamataz]

[Seeing More Clearly Now]

“But I as I point out if he wants any thing resembling a successful presidency, he will have to backtrack. Voters are forgiving of human mistakes. What they will not forgive is crass arrogance and a refusal to heed life’s lessons”

One thing cannot be reinterated enough: Obama’s camp are not out to do what’s good for America. The only success they are after in this presidency is success in forcing into being as many anti-capitalism programs as they can in the time they have left. If they launch five socialist initiatives and succeed in getting through only two of them, they have still succeeded in moving along their Marxist agenda. Theirs is a longer term agenda. Obama was raised and mentored by true Marxist believers.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

The best thing that could happen to Barack Obama is more Democratic losses in hodgepodge elections that might yank away our young transfixed Narcissus from his mesmerizing reflecting pool.

Ha!

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

Jive-Talking Rapper.

That sums up the fool in the White House.

[Tolik]

Victor Davis Hanson:

Just a partial list: http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index:

"Let me be perfectly NOT clear" & "Make lots of MISTAKES about it" [Victor Davis Hanson on Obama's lies]

Our Sorta, Kinda War on Terror - President Obama has not signed up for a serious effort against radical Islam

Truths We Dare Not Speak. Five propositions that simply have become taboo

When Conservative Felonies Become Liberal Misdemeanors

2010: Our Year of Decision

Beating the Dead Terrorist Horse. September 11 taught us many lessons. To our peril, we have forgotten them

Bush Did It! And, Really, Bush Did It! And Bush Really Did It!

A Humpty-Dumpty View of the World

2009 Chickens and Their 2010 Roost

Where Did These Guys Come From? The Origins of Obamism

The War Against the Wannabe Rich. Why attack the productive classes who want to be rich?

The Long March From California to Copenhagen [Hanson on debate between capitalism and socialism]

The Palin Wonder

Why Are We Tiring of Obama?

Change, Weakness, Disaster, Obama: Answers from Victor Davis Hanson

If Iran Refuses To Cooperate, Block Its Ports

Resetting the Reset Button [Victor Davis Hanson dissects 0's pathetic diplomacy]

Riding the Back of the Tiger [Victor Davis Hanson on Obama not understanding What Causes Wars...]

What Bush Inherited, and What He Left Left Behind

Who Are ‘They’? To Obama, “they” are responsible for all our troubles. Problem is, “they” are most of us

Afghan Mythologies. We have everything we need to defeat the Taliban.

The Discreet Charm of the Left-wing Plutocracy

Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy. Jimmy Carter rejected the postwar consensus. President Obama appears to be following a similar path

Dr. Barack and Mr. Obama - The backlash is sharp as voters learn that Obama is not the man they thought he was

Obama and "Redistributive Change". His real agenda

The War Against the Producers

President Palin’s First 100 Days. Imagine if Sarah Palin had Obama’s record

Thoughts About Depressed Americans

Our Battered American [gets angrier - Must Read Rant]

Just a partial list. Much more at the link:  http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index

[Tolik]

Obama has to wonder what brought about the Scott Brown moment.

 

  Ping !

Let me know if you want in or out.

Links:   

FR Index of his articles:	http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/victordavishanson/index
NRO archive:	http://author.nationalreview.com/?q=MjI1MQ==
Pajamasmedia:	http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/
His website:	http://victorhanson.com/

[NonValueAdded]

Another great VDH analysis. Can’t wait to see what Steyn has to say.

[MEG33]

“The best thing that could happen to Barack Obama is more Democratic losses in hodgepodge elections that might yank away our young transfixed Narcissus from his mesmerizing reflecting pool.”

Great article..

[bcsco]

That doesn't count, since everybody with an IQ above 85 knew he was lying.

It does count. They were still campaign promises. Whether we took him at his word or dismissed his promises is immaterial. They were still promises, and he has broken them.

He lied to the American people and it is now evident for all to see. And this, if for no other reason, is why it counts.

[maica]

Regarding Obama’s “roots”, have you noticed that he gets really emotional when he criticizes bankers, but not when he addresses horrible events like the Fort Hood massacre or the Haiti earthquakes?

I maintain that he resented his grandmother, and agree with you about his innate racist outlook. There are numerous examples of his behavior that illustrate this - starting with insulting the Prime Minister of Great Britain last year.

[maica]

I forgot to include that Obama’s grandmother was a banker, and probably the only disciplined person in Barry’s family circle.

[Blind Eye Jones]

It’s no coincidence that almost everything Obama has done was a wrong turn and has been bad for America. Is it gross incompetency or something bordering on malicious intent? Is it the work of an air-head, celebrity president or a sinister socialist with an agenda? Maybe a combination of both? One thing is for sure: America cannot take three more years of this nonsense. Let’s admit one thing: it was fun while it lasted — a spectacle and pageant of messianic proportions, America’s first Demiurge and Demagogue packaged into One, paraded around, flying on Air Force One if not flying the seat of his pants. Entertainment and Greek columns, low bows and low brow rappers, American Idol come to life like Pygmalion, Marxist idolatry at its finest dress up and served to the masses — but the party is over. The Emperor-Elect, demigod/Che substitute must go.

[The_Media_never_lie]

It’s no coincidence that almost everything Obama has done was a wrong turn and has been bad for America. Is it gross incompetency or something bordering on malicious intent? Is it the work of an air-head, celebrity president or a sinister socialist with an agenda? Maybe a combination of both? One thing is for sure: America cannot take three more years of this nonsense. Let’s admit one thing: it was fun while it lasted — a spectacle and pageant of messianic proportions, America’s first Demiurge and Demagogue packaged into One, paraded around, flying on Air Force One if not flying the seat of his pants. Entertainment and Greek columns, low bows and low brow rappers, American Idol come to life like Pygmalion, Marxist idolatry at its finest dress up and served to the masses — but the party is over. The Emperor-Elect, demigod/Che substitute must go.

Great synopsis(posted here for re-reading), but we're stuck with this incompetent teleprompter reader for 3 more years. Elections have consequences.

[astyanax]

Can any ignorance be more abysmal?
Definitely.
How about a complete disregard for artistic license?
Or getting you panties in a bunch over a cartoon and pretending it has implications pertaining to the state of public discourse.
...sigh...