The Coming Backlash
As Americans render what Catholics call temporal judgment on George Bush, are they aware of the radical course correction they are about to make?
This center-right country is about to strengthen a liberal Congress whose approval rating is 10 percent and implant in Washington a regime further to the left than any in U.S. history. Consider.
As of today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat, anticipates gains of 15-30 seats. Sen. Harry Reid, whose partisanship grates even on many in his own party, may see his caucus expand to a filibuster-proof majority where he can ignore Republican dissent.
Headed for the White House is the most left-wing member of the Senate, according to the National Journal. To the vice president's mansion is headed Joe Biden, third most liberal as ranked by the National Journal, ahead of No. 4, Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders.
What will this mean to America? An administration that is either at war with its base or at war with the nation.
America may desperately desire to close the book on the Bush presidency. Yet there is, as of now, no hard evidence it has embraced Obama, his ideology, or agenda. Indeed, his campaign testifies, by its policy shifts, that it is fully aware the nation is still resisting the idea of an Obama presidency.
In the later primaries, even as a panicked media were demanding that Hillary drop out of the race, she consistently routed Obama in Ohio and Pennsylvania and crushed him in West Virginia and Kentucky.
By April and May, the Democratic Party was manifesting all the symptoms of buyer's remorse over how it had voted in January and February.
Obama's convention put him eight points up. But, as soon as America heard Sarah Palin in St. Paul, the Republicans shot up 10 points and seemed headed for victory.
What brought about the Obama-Biden resurgence was nothing Obama and Biden did, but the mid-September crash of Fannie, Freddie, Lehman Brothers, AIG, the stock market, where $4 trillion was wiped out, the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that enraged Middle America—and John McCain's classically inept handling of the crisis.
In short, Obama has still not closed the sale. Every time America takes a second look at him, it has second thoughts, and backs away.
Even after the media have mocked and pilloried Palin and ceded Obama and Biden victory in all four debates, the nation, according to Gallup, is slowly moving back toward the Republican ticket.
Moreover, Obama knows Middle America harbors deep suspicions of him. Thus, he has jettisoned the rhetoric about the "fierce urgency of now," and "We are the people we've been waiting for," even as he has jettisoned position after position to make himself acceptable.
His "flip-flops" testify most convincingly to the fact that Obama knows that where he comes from is far outside the American mainstream. For what are flip-flops other than concessions that a position is untenable and must be abandoned?
Flip-flopping reveals the prime meridian of presidential politics. If an analyst will collate all the positions to which all the candidates move, he will find himself close to the true center of national politics.
Thus, though he is the nominee of a party that is in thrall to the environmental movement, Obama has signaled conditional support for offshore drilling and pumping out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
While holding to his pledge for a pullout of combat brigades from Iraq in 16 months, he has talked of "refining" his position and of a residual U.S. force to train the Iraqi Army and deal with Al Qaeda.
On Afghanistan, he has called for 10,000 more troops and U.S. strikes in Pakistan to kill Bin Laden, even without prior notice or the permission of the Pakistani government.
Since securing the nomination, Obama has adopted the Scalia position on the death penalty for child rape and the right to keep a handgun in the home. He voted to give the telecoms immunity from prosecution for colluding in Bush wiretaps. This onetime sympathizer of the Palestinians now does a passable imitation of Ariel Sharon.
No Democrat has ever come out of the far left of his party to win the presidency. McGovern, the furthest left, stayed true to his convictions and lost 49 states.
Obama has chosen another course. Though he comes out of the McGovern-Jesse Jackson left, he has shed past positions like support for partial birth abortion as fast as he has shed past associations, from William Ayers to ACORN, from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to his fellow parishioners at Trinity United.
One question remains: Will a President Obama, with his party in absolute control of both Houses, revert to the politics and policies of the Left that brought him the nomination, or resist his ex-comrades' demands that he seize the hour and impose the agenda ACORN, Ayers, Jesse, and Wright have long dreamed of?
Whichever way he decides, he will be at war with them, or at war with us. If Barack wins, a backlash is coming.
COPYRIGHT 2008 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.
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SPR, I don't believe that presence of SDS deserves to be regarded as benign at any time regardless of the timelines. Please take a look at the DVD and the article. The SDS ideology is infectious to the impressionable minds, as it incites otherwise apathetic bystanders to act violently on their behalf. Just ask any high school senior that had to put up posters around his high school for Mccain. As for Stockholm Syndrome, in a state like Michigan that's been devastated by socialism already, there is the possibility that the people you are mentioning are taking cover by identifying with the opressors. They may have even felt pressured to put up those signs, who knows? Be that as it may, If you choose to believe that Obama and Mccain are pretty much the same, that's fine, but there has to be some line drawn at where paleo sensibilities need to end, from where one has to start to stand up to the Marxists . Perhaps you have not reached that line yet, but some people have. Right now there is a good chance that we'll get the worst of both worlds, Marxism and Neoconservatism at the same time.
Miss Eagle (@44)
Yes, I think your´re right. If we are to understand each other at all, we really, as you say "need to return to some more clear definitions of “conservative” or “centrist”, - not to say communism, an ideology which hardly exists any longer, at least not in Europe and/or the European Union! (In my own country Norway we had two tiny communist parties before the Berlin Wall came down, both of which have all but disappeared. Anyway, with 0,1 % and 0,3 % of the votes respectively they never reached representation in the parliament). But most of all, I think that the whole question is not so much about "left" or "right" but about human rights, security - both social and in other matters; equality and freedom, another thing which needs to be defined, like for example the difference between freedom to, and freedom from. In any case, in a parlamentary democracy there is no way anybody can "cement their permanent hold on power" except by the people and their vote.
To put "Christian Democrats", "Socialists" and "Democratic Soicialists" in the same sack is, excuse me, outright stupid, not to say insinuating that France´s president Nicolas Sarkozy, former leader of the conservative party " is somehow a leftist. All this indicates that you know very little of politics, in Europe or else. So let´s straighten out the definitions first, before - or if - we´re going to continue this discussion.
Etienne Gervaise (@50):
Further proof that the Republicans are indeed the Stupid Party. Well at least in Michigan.
No quarrels here. I'm simply noting the phenomenon, not expressing approval of it.
Jack Bailey (@51):
As for Stockholm Syndrome, in a state like Michigan that’s been devastated by socialism already, there is the possibility that the people you are mentioning are taking cover by identifying with the opressors. They may have even felt pressured to put up those signs, who knows?
You've just given me the laugh of the day, and it's not even 9 A.M. Trust me, the areas of Michigan that I'm talking about are not populated by folks who are likely to give in to "pressure" to put up any campaign signs. In fact, it's quite the opposite: There was a time even in my life when putting up an Obama sign in, say, Baldwin, Michigan, would have meant that you put your family and property in danger.
(For those who know Michigan, I'm speaking of the belt that runs northeast from, say, Newaygo to Roscommon.)
But by the way, the east side of the state will be filled with Obama voters who voted for Reagan. That is, after all, the home of the fabled Reagan Democrats, who already largely reverted to the Democratic Party in 1992 (and even more so in 1996).
Jack Bailey (@51):
I don’t believe that presence of SDS deserves to be regarded as benign at any time regardless of the timelines.
That's not what I said. You're lumping Obama in with SDS types, and he simply isn't. (What he is may, in its own way, be much worse.) He's surrounded himself not with SDSers but with the establishment Democrats who populated the Clinton White House and the Kerry campaign. There's no reason that I can see to believe that he'll dump them after the election and fill his Cabinet with SDS types instead.
It's a sad day when you have to go to Youtube to hear the minor party candidates state their positions on issues. Hell, at this stage of the game even Ralph Nader seems like a right winger compared with the Big 2.
Oh Pat! Wake up! We have even Southern Baptists thoroughly comfortable with adulterers in their pulpits, so why would a Socialist in the White House bother a fat pig Gaither-loving American? You mis-overestimate your fellow Americans. They really are swine now (The Hefty Goodmans), and they truly and richy deserve every low-brow, soul-killing measure that the next congress can inflict upon them!
@43 Abe Froman the sausage king of Chicago!
Parties do not matter to me any more, but they did when I was younger and more idealistic. When it comes to voting in the legislature, it all comes down to a yes or no vote. A man of principle will vote no on everything, like Georgia's Larry McDonald of blessed memory. Lots of people wanted him dead, and they got their way when KAL007 was shot down over Kamchatka.
It's come to the point where I'll vote for a communist if he promises to vote no on anything he does not have the time to read, and that would be every bill.