Posted on 10/06/2010 8:03:55 PM PDT by neverdem
Had the Obamites been sober and circumspect after the 2008 election they would have realized that Obama had pulled off what McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry had not, due to a once-in-a-century perfect storm of about six events:
1) The September 15, 2008 financial meltdown that destroyed John McCain’s small, but steady lead.
2) The fascination with a possible landmark election of an African American candidate.
3) The inept McCain campaign that at times seemed more to wish to lose nobly than to win in a messy fashion.
4) The adroit Obama campaign that stressed centrist, “across the aisle” issues and style.
5) The “tingle in the leg” biased media coverage.
6) The first election without an incumbent or vice president since 1952 in which both candidates ran against the status quo Republican record.
Instead, Obama — egged on by obsequious advisers, an out-of-touch, hard-left base, and a toady media — decided that he had done what other Northern liberals had not, either because (a) the country was at last ready for European-style socialism, or (b) his singular charisma and talents could convince it that it was even when it was clearly not.
The result was that our Oedipus/Pentheus rushed headlong into socialized medicine, mega-deficits, needlessly polarizing appointments of the Van Jones type, and various federal takeovers, coupled with quite unnecessary editorializing about largely local matters — from the Skip Gates mess to the Arizona immigration law and Ground Zero mosque.
In each case, the supposed uniter deliberately weighed in on these controversies to quite unfairly demonize his opponents — “stupidly” acting police, Arizona xenophobes picking up children on the way to buy ice cream, Islamophobes wanting to deny religious liberty, etc. A thousand other nicks, from Eric Holder’s “nation of cowards” to Obama’s musings that at some point one needs no more income, ensured continual bleeding as his poll numbers fell by nearly 30 points in just 20 months.
The result was that the president soon lost the moral capital to push through an unpopular agenda — to such a degree that his out-of-the-mainstream views and his polarizing style of governance might well destroy Democratic congressional majorities for a decade.
As in all Greek tragedies, we the audience can see what might have happened had Obama avoided hubris and its attendant nemesis: If, from the get-go, he had focused on jobs; avoided talking about tax hikes; postponed health care; controlled spending; worried about rising deficits; avoided the “them vs. us” rhetoric; and stayed Olympian and aloof when polarizing local controversies grabbed the cable TV headlines.
And now? After November, Obama can only hope that he can outsource the messy work of cuts and budget balancing to the congressional Republicans. Chances are he will demagogue them as heartless while taking credit for an economic rebound once investors, businesses, and corporations see an end to Obamism and its gratuitous slurs against the wealthy, and thus start using their stockpiled trillions to rehire and buy equipment in 2011.
In the meantime, an entire generation of Democratic House members and senators are going to pay a heavy price for falling for a clearly inexperienced, untried, and often petulant candidate amid the exuberance of the 2008 hope and change wave.
Hansen is more optimistic than I am that we can turn this ship around and get a recovery with Obama’s veto power.
Nothing fails like success.
“In the meantime, an entire generation of Democratic House members and senators are going to pay a heavy price for falling for a clearly inexperienced, untried, and often petulant candidate amid the exuberance of the 2008 hope and change wave.”
Music to my ears.
International events will probably converge in such a way as to make Obama's politic-ing look literally insane. Unfortunately, this may come with a significant number of innocent lives lost.
The House controls the purse strings. Obama can’t veto something that isn’t passed - no funding for implementing health care, for example (if that makes sense, trying to describe a double negative...)
And it is the number of lives this jackass is likely to cost that worries me the most. Mullah Hussein has set the stage for some of the most destructive times this country has seen since the Civil War.
Stout hearts...
First we win, THEN we do the end-zone dance.
True. I guess the Dem Congress didn’t pass a budget, so the Pubs don’t have to either.
What would get the economy going is major spending reductions AND major tax reductions. The tax reductions would have to be signed. Ass would probably veto them, but that would put him in a pretty bad situation politically.
Yeah, the ending was maybe a bit too optimistic but the rest of the article gives a spot-on analysis of 2008 to today.
People dont like to focus on a subject they know nothing about.
“...and thus start using their stockpiled trillions to rehire and buy equipment in 2011.”
VDH is brilliant.
But the above statement is frightening.
Capital formation in this country is nearly non-existent. What we thought was savings was actually pulled-forward demand by excessive credit and ZIRP.
And credit won’t exist once the mortgage meltdown hits in full-force in 2011 (Option-ARMs, ALT-A’s, defaults, and CRE). The mortgage meltdown will take out several of the biggest banks. CRE will take out a good chunk of the middle-tier banks.
IF — and that is the largest hypothetical IF you can imagine — we did not have the debt we have, we could fix this economy by massive cuts to socialist spending (read: “entitlements”) and massive tax cuts on businesses so that they could actually resume REAL capital formation to grow their businesses and hire people.
But even if we did the above, we still can’t succeed because pretty soon just paying the interest on our national debt will consume such a large chunk of GDP, our economy will be in its unrightable tail-spin.
No, my FRiends. The left is now doing what they always do when their socialist economic policies fail: they are blaming other nations and they are inflating their way out.
We are hearing the first saber-rattlings of an eventual war with China. The first womanish slap was by Timmy-boy Geithner who had the nerve this week to criticize China’s manipulation of the currency — and this from a womanish little boy whose entire professional career has been with an organization that manipulates the currency via inflation and deflation and artificially setting the interest rate.
4) The adroit Obama campaign that stressed centrist, “across the aisle” issues and style.
Hansen is right, it can be done in spite of his veto. Depending on how deep the crater is where the Dems were after the Nov. 2. Bomb hits.
I pray that the damage is so bad the it destroys their corrupt machine. That the crater looks more like a glass parking lot than a bomb crater.
THEN, we must identify, hunt down, charge, try, convict, and punish those traitors who have tried to destroy this nation........
It must be done.
It is TIME to DownSize DC! Eliminate entire Departments beginning with the worthless Federal Department of Education.
IT IS TIME.
I think so too. I do not think we will recover until Obaama is gone.
Many of my ancestors were literally burned out of AL during Reconstruction after that one. They went GTT (Gone to Texas). There are frightening parallels between the political chaos then and now. But to right this, Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes.
what’s left to turn around. The economy has been destroyed and we’re left to dig out from the rubble. This fool thinks that he really has the power when he’s just been a tool.
“Hansen is more optimistic than I am that we can turn this ship around and get a recovery with Obama’s veto power.”
A representative GOP should send good legislation up over and over, and force BO to veto. They cannot sit passively and say there was no point in trying.
BO will veto, but it will work against him and his party if it is made to reveal how malignant he is.
The media said they did. which is almost the same thing...
The campaign PR did.
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