I’ve got great news for you. In case you haven’t noticed, Barack Obama’s honeymoon with a trusting, gullible public is over.
For the first time since last November, a majority of Americans say they don’t like his policies. Many of them are concerned that he is going to bankrupt the country. Can you believe it? Where would they get such a crazy idea?
Before I get into the specific policy mistakes — and the Obama administration has made a ton of them — let’s take a brief look at the numbers. The Angry Left likes to take all of the credit for Obama’s election (and thus demands that he implement every far-left scheme they can propose). But the truth is vastly different.
Last November, Barack Obama won the election with 53 million votes. John McCain finished second with 46 million votes. That’s a margin of 7 million.
Who were those voters? Almost without exception, they came from the middle of the political spectrum. They are neither Republicans or Democrats. They describe themselves as independents. And here’s the amazing thing: Some 10 million of them now say they don’t like what President Obama is doing.
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At the beginning of his term, President Obama enjoyed the support of more than 80 percent of the people who described themselves as independents. Today that number has fallen to under 50 percent. That’s an amazing reversal in just a few months.
How did Obama do it? Let me count just a few of the ways.
1. A stimulus program that didn’t stimulate. While the street cleaners in Washington were still cleaning up the confetti from the inauguration, the Democrats rammed through an $787-billion stimulus bill. The measure was supposed to solve our employment crisis, bail out state and local governments, get the economy moving again and make flowers grow in the desert.
Okay, I’m kidding about the last one. But you remember all the extravagant promises this massive spending bill was supposed to achieve. Instead, unemployment has continued to climb, California was forced to issue IOUs, the housing crisis took a turn for the worse and the economy barely limps along. To paraphrase an old country song, Congress got the gold mine (the bill had so much pork it squealed) while the taxpayers got the shaft.
2. Next, Obama set out to nationalize just about everything. The Feds took $100 billion or so to bail out their buddies on Wall Street. The insurance industry was next, with $80 billion going to prop up just one company, American International Group (aka AIG). Then the national banks were coerced into taking loads of federal moola — and all the “oversight” that would mean. The car companies were the next takeover target, as Uncle Sam became the new boss at Chrysler and General Motors.
And now the Obama administration wants to make health care in this country more “fair” and “efficient.” I’ll have more to say about the absolute ludicrousness of such proposals at some other time. For now, let me just note that a whole lot of Americans have gotten so fed up, they’re saying “no more!”
3. Massive new spending, and exploding deficits, as far into the future as we can see. What will all of this incredible largesse cost? In less than six months the Obama administration has racked up the biggest deficit this country has ever witnessed. And the red ink will continue to pour over us for as far into the future as we can see.
The administration claims that its cost over-runs will “only” amount to a trillion dollars a year for the next 10 years or so. They base this number on incredibly optimistic estimates of how much their programs will cost. And even more generous guesses of how much tax revenue they can take from us.
Of course, anyone who believes these projections won’t go a whole lot higher probably also believes in the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. Every sensible American knows that spending will get worse, taxes will get higher — and the deficits will multiply faster than maggots in a dumpster.
Along with all of these big issues, there have been dozens of smaller ones that have damaged Obama’s poise and credibility. How stupid was it for him to call the police in Cambridge, Mass., stupid? I was shocked and shamed to see the President of the United States use his bully platform to side with a black professor who lost his cool. So were a lot of other Americans, both black and white. Obama responded like a knee-jerk racist.
I won’t even get into all of Obama’s foreign-policy blunders. Everywhere you look it seems to be his intention to treat our friends as enemies and our enemies as friends. South of our border, the good people and legitimate government of Honduras used legal and constitutional means to rid themselves of a Hugo Chavez crony. Instead of applauding them for protecting their liberties, Obama’s State Department seems determined to reinstall a budding Marxist tyrant there. Shame on them.To put it as succinctly as possible, Barack Obama seems determined to preside over the most radical transformation of the Federal Government this country has ever seen.
And the American people don’t want it.
The American people don’t want trillion-dollar deficits. They don’t want huge new government agencies to supervise our health care. They don’t want the people who defended us from terrorism persecuted or prosecuted.
They don’t want our friends penalized or our enemies pandered to. They don’t want more of their hard-earned money taken from them and given to people who didn’t earn it and don’t deserve it.
And when they’ve had all they can stand, they really don’t want to be called “un-American” and “evil mongers” when they finally decide to speak out.
So what do I think will happen?
I think we are witnessing the beginning of the end of liberal domination in Washington. I think Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and Barack Obama have badly underestimated the American people. They lied about what they’d do and they badly misjudged how much we would endure.
The counter-revolution has begun. You can see it at town hall meetings and tea parties. You can hear it in conversations with your neighbors. You can feel it as the left becomes more hysterical, more abusive, and … yes, I’m delighted to say it … more frightened.
We won’t win every battle over the next year or two. But we’ll win a bunch of them. And before too much more time passes—by the time Barack Obama’s successor is getting ready to leave the White House — I predict that the Obama era will be seen as the last gasp of liberalism. The dinosaurs of the left may not become extinct. But they are about to lose their fangs.
Yes, the era of big government will soon be over. And we’ll have Barack Obama and all of his over-reaching cronies to thank for it.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest, where his Straight Talk column appears twice a month. This article first appeared in PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.
