Charles Krauthammer zeros in on another broken Obama campaign pledge. His vow to return bi-partisanship to Washington has been shelved in favor of passing Healthcare legislation now. Obama knows it’s now or never; the mid-term elections will surely weaken the Democrat majorities in both Houses of Congress. Here’s Charles:
“Onward With Obamacare, Regardless”
By Charles Krauthammer, published Friday, March 5, 2010
“So the yearlong production, set to close after Massachusetts’s devastatingly negative Jan. 19 review, saw the curtain raised one last time. Obamacare lives.
After 34 speeches, three sharp electoral rebukes (Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts) and a seven-hour seminar, the president announced Wednesday his determination to make one last push to pass his health-care reform.
The final act was carefully choreographed. The rollout began a week earlier with a couple of shows of bipartisanship: a Feb. 25 Blair House ’summit’ with Republicans, followed five days later with a few concessions tossed the Republicans’ way.
Show is the operative noun. Among the few Republican suggestions President Obama pretended to incorporate was tort reform. What did he suggest to address the plague of defensive medicine that a Massachusetts Medical Society study showed leads to about 25 percent of doctor referrals, tests and procedures being done for no medical reason? A few ridiculously insignificant demonstration projects amounting to one-half of one-hundredth of 1 percent of the cost of his health-care bill.
As for the Blair House seminar, its theatrical quality was obvious even before it began. The Democrats had already decided to go for a purely partisan bill. Obama signaled precisely that intent at the end of the summit show — then dramatically spelled it out just six days later in his 35th health-care speech: He is going for the party-line vote.
Unfortunately for Democrats, that seven-hour televised exercise had the unintended consequence of showing the Republicans to be not only highly informed on the subject, but also, as even Obama was forced to admit, possessed of principled objections — contradicting the ubiquitous Democratic/media meme that Republican opposition was nothing but nihilistic partisanship.
Republicans did so well, in fact, that in his summation, Obama was reduced to suggesting that his health-care reform was indeed popular because when you ask people about individual items (for example, eliminating exclusions for preexisting conditions or capping individual out-of-pocket payments), they are in favor.
Yet mystifyingly they oppose the whole package. How can that be?
Allow me to demystify. Imagine a bill granting every American a free federally delivered ice cream every Sunday morning. Provision 2: steak on Monday, also home delivered. Provision 3: a dozen red roses every Tuesday. You get the idea. Would each individual provision be popular in the polls? Of course.
However (life is a vale of howevers) suppose these provisions were bundled into a bill that also spelled out how the goodies are to be paid for and managed — say, half a trillion dollars in new taxes, half a trillion in Medicare cuts (cuts not to keep Medicare solvent but to pay for the ice cream, steak and flowers), 118 new boards and commissions to administer the bounty-giving, and government regulation dictating, for example, how your steak is to be cooked. How do you think this would poll?
Perhaps something like 3 to 1 against, which is what the latest CNN poll shows is the citizenry’s feeling about the current Democratic health-care bills.
Late last year, Democrats were marveling at how close they were to historic health-care reform, noting how much agreement had been achieved among so many factions. The only remaining detail was how to pay for it.
Well, yes. That has generally been the problem with democratic governance: cost. The disagreeable absence of a free lunch.
Which is what drove even strong Obama supporter Warren Buffett to go public with his judgment that the current Senate bill, while better than nothing, is a failure because the country desperately needs to bend the cost curve down, and the bill doesn’t do it. Buffett’s advice would be to start over and get it right with a bill that says ‘we’re just going to focus on costs and we’re not going to dream up 2,000 pages of other things.’ (Disclosure: Buffett is a director of The Washington Post Co.)
Obama has chosen differently, however. The time for debate is over, declared the nation’s seminar leader in chief. The man who vowed to undo Washington’s devious and wicked ways has directed the Congress to ram Obamacare through, by one vote if necessary, under the parliamentary device of ‘budget reconciliation.’ The man who ran as a post-partisan is determined to remake a sixth of the U.S. economy despite the absence of support from a single Republican in either house, the first time anything of this size and scope has been enacted by pure party-line vote.
Surprised? You can only be disillusioned if you were once illusioned.”
Bonnie Parsley of Murrieta penned the following article, published in the The Californian just today. Ms. Parsley’s wisdom is striking and in sharp contrast to the limp-wristed, off the mark writings of most “elite” political commentators. Enjoy:
“Nation needs to return to founding principles”
Posted: February 28, 2010
“Have you wondered why many people today subscribe to a political philosophy of socialism? Why do some people put their faith and trust in government to solve problems? Why are many willing to give up their individual liberty for the common good, i.e., the collective? I believe it’s a failure of our public schools to educate young people about the founding of our country and the principles of freedom it was founded upon.
For more than 100 years, our countrymen have been fighting over whether we should govern from the left —- socialism —- or from the right —- individualism. Why do we continue this argument when there are so many examples from history illustrating the failure of political systems based on the collective?
President Ronald Reagan had a brilliant way of explaining the superiority of our system. In his 1975 speech at CPAC, he said the following:
‘Let’s have no more theorizing when actual comparison is possible. There is in the world a great nation, larger than ours in territory and populated with 250 million capable people. It is rich in resources and has had more than 50 uninterrupted years to practice socialism without opposition.
We could match them, but it would take a little doing on our part. We’d have to cut our paychecks back by 75 percent; move 60 million workers back to the farm; abandon two-thirds of our steelmaking capacity; destroy 40 million television sets; tear up 14 out of every 15 miles of highway; junk 19 of every 20 automobiles; tear up two-thirds of our railroad tracks; knock down 70 percent of our houses; and rip out nine of every 10 telephones. Then all we have to do is find a capitalist country to sell us wheat on credit to keep us from starving!’
What a powerful statement and yet, what is being taught in our schools about the perils of a socialist system? What citizen understands the genius of our founders in setting up our constitutional government? What child, or adult for that matter, understands the difference between a democracy and a republic?
Our founders explicitly ruled out a democracy because it can easily deteriorate into mob rule. They tried their best to ensure that our government would never become corrupt and oppressive. They designed a system of limited federal power, and divided responsibility between three branches of government so that no one branch could become dictatorial.
But we’ve veered off course. For more than 100 years our legislators have been ignoring our Constitution. They take an oath to protect it and defend it; then they ignore it and do as they please. It is time that people stand up and shout, No More!
Reagan said, ‘Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again.’
We must fight to restore our republic and return to the principles that gave us the most prosperous, free nation on the planet.”
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy as Guest Authors at 5:13 PM UTC
Remember the White House party crashers? Well, here’s a video that puts a whole new twist on how they should be regarded:
After 8 years of combat in Afghanistan, American military commanders are suddenly relying on an old and disproved strategy: win the hearts and minds of the people. We are going to do this by avoiding civilian casualties, no easy task when the enemy goes to great lengths to look exactly like non-combatants. Nevertheless, Afghan President Karzai raised the bar to dizzying heights just this week. According to the Associated Press, Karzai pleaded, “We need to reach the point where there are no civilian casualties.” That would certainly be a first.
Actually, we’ve come a long way since the bad old days of World War II. Millions of civilians paid the ultimate price in that conflict, more than a few on the receiving end of American munitions. It’s not that Allied forces didn’t try to avoid killing civilians, but they also had a larger goal in mind: winning the war. The only way to reduce non-combatant casualties to zero is to stop fighting, period. Of course, a necessary corollary to calling it quits is racking up another American defeat.
Which brings us to Vietnam. Winning hearts and minds is a phrase that sends chills down the spines of those of us who remember the Vietnam War. With more than 500,000 troops in country at the apex of that conflict, we thrashed about like an elephant in a sea of mice. The result, of course, was that we killed tens of thousands of civilians. Interestingly, that’s not what lost the battle for civilian support. After all, the NVA and Vietcong killed far more civilians than we did. So, why did most civilians side with our enemy? The simple answer is that every Vietnamese knew we wouldn’t be there forever. And when we left, they’d have to deal with the victors. Self-preservation made the choice easy.
Our soldiers and Marines fighting in Afghanistan have new rules of engagement: they can’t shoot the enemy unless he is seen actually holding a rifle. Taliban fighters know this, of course, and are using it to great advantage. However, no matter how careful we are, Afghan civilians will secretly or openly side with our enemy because they know American forces will begin pulling out in a year or two. Our President said so. So, we’ll clear a few towns and kill a bunch of Taliban and a few civilians, and then leave Afghanistan pretty much the way we found it.
What a waste. If we don’t have the stomach to do what it takes to win in Afghanistan, then we shouldn’t spend another life or dollar trying to do the impossible. War is hell. If we can’t accept that we should bring the troops home now.
With the nation’s capital enduring the worst snow storm since 1922, the final nails are being driven into global warming’s coffin. Thank God. Reading the following article offers a glimpse into the diabolical goals of the movement. But be sure of this: the radical left’s enduring hatred of all things capitalist will motivate similar attacks in the future. Thus, we should never forget how close we may have come to economic suicide. Happy reading:
“The great global warming collapse”
“As the science scandals keep coming, the air has gone out of the climate-change movement”
By Margaret Wente, Published on Friday, Feb. 05, 2010
“In 2007, the most comprehensive report to date on global warming, issued by the respected United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a shocking claim: The Himalayan glaciers could melt away as soon as 2035.
These glaciers provide the headwaters for Asia’s nine largest rivers and lifelines for the more than one billion people who live downstream. Melting ice and snow would create mass flooding, followed by mass drought. The glacier story was reported around the world. Last December, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund, an environmental pressure group, warned, ‘The deal reached at Copenhagen will have huge ramifications for the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are already highly vulnerable due to widespread poverty.’ To dramatize their country’s plight, Nepal’s top politicians strapped on oxygen tanks and held a cabinet meeting on Mount Everest.
But the claim was rubbish, and the world’s top glaciologists knew it. It was based not on rigorously peer-reviewed science but on an anecdotal report by the WWF itself. When its background came to light on the eve of Copenhagen, Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the IPCC, shrugged it off. But now, even leading scientists and environmental groups admit the IPCC is facing a crisis of credibility that makes the Climategate affair look like small change.
‘The global warming movement as we have known it is dead,’ the brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead says in his blog on The American Interest. It was done in by a combination of bad science and bad politics.
The impetus for the Copenhagen conference was that the science makes it imperative for us to act. But even if that were true – and even if we knew what to do – a global deal was never in the cards. As Mr. Mead writes, ‘The global warming movement proposed a complex set of international agreements involving vast transfers of funds, intrusive regulations in national economies, and substantial changes to the domestic political economies of most countries on the planet.’ Copenhagen was never going to produce a breakthrough. It was a dead end.
And now, the science scandals just keep on coming. First there was the vast cache of e-mails leaked from the University of East Anglia, home of a crucial research unit responsible for collecting temperature data. Although not fatal to the science, they revealed a snakepit of scheming to keep contradictory research from being published, make imperfect data look better, and withhold information from unfriendly third parties. If science is supposed to be open and transparent, these guys acted as if they had a lot to hide.
Despite widespread efforts to play down the Climategate e-mails, they were very damaging. An investigation by the British newspaper The Guardian – among the most aggressive advocates for action on climate change – has found that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed, and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
Meantime, the IPCC – the body widely regarded, until now, as the ultimate authority on climate science – is looking worse and worse. After it was forced to retract its claim about melting glaciers, Mr. Pachauri dismissed the error as a one-off. But other IPCC claims have turned out to be just as groundless.
For example, it warned that large tracts of the Amazon rain forest might be wiped out by global warming because they are extremely susceptible to even modest decreases in rainfall. The sole source for that claim, reports The Sunday Times of London, was a magazine article written by a pair of climate activists, one of whom worked for the WWF. One scientist contacted by the Times, a specialist in tropical forest ecology, called the article ‘a mess.’
Worse still, the Times has discovered that Mr. Pachauri’s own Energy and Resources Unit, based in New Delhi, has collected millions in grants to study the effects of glacial melting – all on the strength of that bogus glacier claim, which happens to have been endorsed by the same scientist who now runs the unit that got the money. Even so, the IPCC chief is hanging tough. He insists the attacks on him are being orchestrated by companies facing lower profits.
Until now, anyone who questioned the credibility of the IPCC was labelled as a climate skeptic, or worse. But many climate scientists now sense a sinking ship, and they’re bailing out. Among them is Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the University of Victoria who acknowledges that the climate body has crossed the line into advocacy. Even Britain’s Greenpeace has called for Mr. Pachauri’s resignation. India says it will establish its own body to monitor the effects of global warming because it ‘cannot rely’ on the IPCC.
None of this is to say that global warming isn’t real, or that human activity doesn’t play a role, or that the IPCC is entirely wrong, or that measures to curb greenhouse-gas emissions aren’t valid. But the strategy pursued by activists (including scientists who have crossed the line into advocacy) has turned out to be fatally flawed.
By exaggerating the certainties, papering over the gaps, demonizing the skeptics and peddling tales of imminent catastrophe, they’ve discredited the entire climate-change movement. The political damage will be severe. As Mr. Mead succinctly puts it: ‘Skeptics up, Obama down, cap-and-trade dead.’ That also goes for Canada, whose climate policies are inevitably tied to those of the United States.
‘I don’t think it’s healthy to dismiss proper skepticism,’ says John Beddington, the chief scientific adviser to the British government. He is a staunch believer in man-made climate change, but he also points out the complexity of climate science. ‘Science grows and improves in the light of criticism. There is a fundamental uncertainty about climate change prediction that can’t be changed.’ In his view, it’s time to stop circling the wagons and throw open the doors. How much the public will keep caring is another matter.”
(Ms. Wente joined The Globe and Mail in 1986 and has been a full-time columnist since 1999. She is also the author of the book An Accidental Canadian: Reflections on My Home and (Not) Native Land.)
The Heritage Foundation’s Amanda Reinecker lays bare the charade of President Obama’s so-called spending freeze:
A Grim Fiscal Forecast
February 2, 2010 | By Amanda Reinecker
“In his State of the Union address last week, President Obama vowed that his administration would enforce a three-year spending freeze to help dig the country out of a ‘massive fiscal hole.’ But the President’s spending freeze would only apply to one-eighth of all spending and save a mere $15 billion. That’s just a drop in the bucket, especially considering the $3.8 trillion 2011 budget proposal the White House released on Monday. According to these figures, freeze or no freeze, that ‘massive fiscal hole’ is about to get much deeper.
The President’s new budget commits the nation to ‘trillions more in spending than taxpayers can afford,’ points out Heritage Foundation budget policy analyst Brian Riedl. $2 trillion more, to be exact. With all this new spending, the ‘freeze’ will do little to address the record budget deficit projected for fiscal 2010. In fact, the deficit will continue to hover at levels not seen since World War II for the next ten years.
Instead of real solutions, the budget proposal offers more of the same (operative word “more”). As Heritage’s Conn Carroll explains, it is ‘full of billions of dollars in new spending, for failed government programs, higher taxes on American families and businesses, and deficit spending for as far as the eye can see.’
These aggressive spending measures would be unaffordable even during good budget times. Rather than attempting to spend its way out of debt, which is an inherently flawed concept, Riedl suggests that the federal government adopt some genuine spending reforms. These would include:
Taking back leftover funds from TARP and the failed stimulus bill;
Enacting tough spending caps — not temporary spending freezes — to help lawmakers prioritize where money is allocated;
Disclosing the massive unfunded obligations of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and outline long-term budgets for these programs;
Reforming entitlement programs, which currently present the greatest domestic challenge our nation faces.
‘Currently, the President’s budget does nothing to address the nation’s serious short-term and long-term fiscal problems — and indeed makes them worse,’ writes Riedl. Though not easy, Riedl’s proposed reforms would permanently reduce the deficit and present a better alternative to record government and enormous tax increases.”
President Barack Obama just released his proposed budget for the coming fiscal year and if you haven’t read the numbers yet you’d better sit down. The bad news is neatly summarized in an Associated Press subhead: “Record spending, record deficit.” A full third of Obama’s $3.8 trillion proffer will be funded with borrowed money. That’s $1.3 trillion more red ink, give or take a few hundred billion. The audacity of it all makes you want to laugh, or cry.
Worse yet are the President’s estimated deficits over the next decade. According to the New York Times News Service, “By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, U.S. deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next ten years.” Eleven years out and beyond things get worse as entitlement spending on the Baby Boomers shifts into high gear.
Such “planning” is nothing less than the gradual yet inevitable implosion of our economy. If America continues on her current “spend now and pay later” path, sometime in the not too distant future our national debt will simply overwhelm us. The government will have but two choices: default on the debt payments or attempt to raise taxes to European levels. It will be like deciding to cut off your hand all at once, or one little piece at a time.
In the meantime, concerned citizens must digest more unwelcome news. The Washington Times is reporting that the Obama administration is planning to expand federal manpower to record levels. During this time of budgetary madness, our government will soon have “the largest federal workforce in modern history.” By year’s end, 2.15 million Americans will be working for Uncle Sam, a robust figure that does not include military personnel. Prudent politicians might think of trimming payrolls at a time like this, but don’t hold your breath.
Budgetary problems haunt governments at every level. It seems that not a day goes by without a story about state, county, or city money woes. My local paper just today published this exciting news about another case of money mismanagement. “The California State Teachers Retirement System is in serious trouble, with a widening long-term funding gap.” It seems California’s ever generous Legislature in 2001 boosted retirement benefits beyond sensible levels. As with the Feds and every other government entity, it’s only a matter of time until the money runs out.
These spending problems are easy to understand. Politicians have come to see their role as philanthropists, lavishly dishing out benefits to folks whose votes can be bought. Citizens on the receiving end of all this largesse grow accustomed to the freebees and howl like banshees at the slightest suggestion of curtailing the gravy trains. Ever increasing spending, and eventual bankruptcy, are the results.
The solution is also simple enough. Demand that every able-bodied American pull his or her own weight. Get government back within the confines of the Constitution. Let personal responsibility reign. If that sounds unrealistic, understand this: after the collapse we’ll wish to God we’d taken action sooner.
Fresh from a week of smackdowns redheaded step-children rarely endure, President Obama made the best of a bad political climate as he addressed the nation last night. Saying nothing new and little believable, Obama droned on for longer than most Americans cared to listen. If you believe he’s going to cut spending, help the middle class, or pass healthcare reform…I’ve got this nice bridge for sale. Like an over-cooked potato, our President is done but he doesn’t know it. We’ve looked at the change he’s bringing and said, “My God, NO!”
My two local papers ran nearly identical headlines, each one trumpeting Obama’s declaration, “I don’t quit.” Bummer. Here’s a man who needs to follow in Richard Nixon’s footsteps, only in the first term. Of course, to their credit, socialists, communists, Marxists and liberals in general do stay the course. While the rest of us are working and raising families, they unceasingly push their unholy agendas. So, the one thing Americans can take to heart is the President’s pledge to keep slugging.
Come to think of it, that may be the best thing to happen to conservatism since Ronald Reagan. Another 10 months of bailouts, failed stimulus programs, beyond-belief government spending and blatant, in-your-face vote buying of Senators and Representatives and Alan Keyes might win an election. Democratic legislators up for reelection in the fall may have been all smiles last night, but you can bet John Edwards’ marriage license their support for Obama’s agenda is fragile at best. Push on Mr. President! The Republican Party needs all the help it can get.
Speaking of cost savings, according to the Associated Press, ”The Democratic-controlled Senate has muscled through a plan to allow the government to go a whopping $1.9 trillion deeper in debt.” The debt ceiling now stands at an unfathomable $14.3 trillion. The $1.9 trillion — enough to run the entire federal government for a full year when Stain Man was in the Oval Office – will barely fund Obama’s slash and burn fiscal policy past the mid-term elections. Barring sanity returning to the budget process, lawmakers will need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling again this December.
How deep is the hole? According to the Associated Press, “That’s about $45,000 for every American.” Adding insult to injury, Senate Democrats passed this nation-killing bill less than 24 hours after President Obama said concerning the spiraling debt, “I will issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.” Too late Mr. President.
The State of the Union can be summed up in three words: House Of Cards. Worse, the Left’s borrow and spend strategy stretches before us as far as the eye can see. The AP confirmed that “New estimates released by the Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday show that the U.S. this year could run a deficit matching last year’s record $1.4 trillion shortfall.” To paraphrase Obama’s spiritual mentor, sooner or later these chickens will come home to roost. If Americans cannot or will not vote these sham artists out of office ASAP, then we’ll deserve what we get. Think Germany 1923.
The upset victory of now Senator Scott Brown in Massachusetts was only part of what has to be the left’s worst week in years. The latest jobs report is dismal at best. Not satisfied with seeing his healthcare takeover go up in smoke, President Obama now wants to take on America’s banking system. The stock market had it’s worst three days in anyone’s memory. And the icing on the cake? John Edwards came clean about his fathering a child with a campaign staffer while his wife battled cancer. Gee, liberals better not ask, “What now?”
After pouring hundreds of billions into “shovel ready” projects — and now that healthcare reform is dead – the Obama administration is vowing to focus on jobs, raising the obvious question: “What have they been doing over the past year?” The latest jobless report is cause for alarm. CNNmoney.com today announced that “A total of 43 states reported rising jobless rates in December…” President Obama must be wondering if he can still blame George Bush for that one. Can anyone spell “double-dip recession”?
Investors sure can. The stock market this week sank like Ted Kennedy’s automobile. Losing 5% over a mere three sessions, traders were said to be worrying “that the White House bank plan and China’s lending curbs” will strike a blow to the nation’s economy, according to CNNmoney.com. Worry isn’t a strong enough term, really. If the Chinese stop lending to their biggest dupe, uh customer — that would be our federal government — we’ll all be eating grass.
Any hope that the administration would change course and let the private sector create jobs was dashed when “Senate Democrats…proposed allowing the federal government to borrow an additional $1.9 trillion to pay its bills, a record increase that would permit the national debt to reach $14.3 trillion,” according to the Associated Press. Are these guys kidding? Sadly, no. Drunk with power and addicted to spending, Senate liberals couldn’t change course to save their souls, or the country’s future.
Think I’m exaggerating? Digest how Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Montana, explained his reason to plunge America further in debt. Said Baucus, “We have gone to the restaurant. We have eaten the meal. Now the only question is whether we will pay the check.” No Senator, the question is, “When will you realize that spending enormous sums of borrowed money without generating jobs or growing the economy can only end in financial catastrophe?” The foolhardiness of our elected leaders is at once monumental and tragic.
Well, there you have it, the perfect storm of liberals’ nightmares. It remains for us to make the entire year of 2010 a bad dream for the left. Unless Obama, Reid and Pelosi begin thinking and acting like statesmen concerned only for the welfare of the country — and don’t hold your breath on that one — they’ll keep beating the same dead horses: more government, more ineffective spending, and more wasteful programs. Such a course could put Republicans in control of the House and Senate once again. Finally, a sweet dream.
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy as Politics at 5:51 PM UTC
Republican Scott Brown’s victory in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s vacant Senate seat boggles the mind. Massachusetts is a Democratic bastion. Brown’s vanquished opponent, Democrat Martha Coakley, is a statewide office holder (Attorney General) and well-known compared to Brown. Just three weeks ago Coakley enjoyed a double-digit lead in polls that seemed to foreshadow a sure thing: a Democrat would fill Ted Kennedy’s place. So much for sure things.
The electoral upset has enormous implications. Now the Democrats are one vote shy of the filibuster-proof 60 they have enjoyed since the landslide Democratic win in 2008, meaning healthcare, cap and trade, and a host of other left-leaning initiatives might be dead in the water. Obamacare is especially vulnerable; Brown openly campaigned against it. Many pundits are saying that strategy was the 1,000 pound weight that broke Oakley’s back.
It’s a whole new ballgame in Washington. Various news reports quoting prominent Democrats reveal a huge ripple effect cursing through the party in power. This, for instance, was published by Politico.com just today:
“Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) told a local reporter, ‘It’s probably back to the drawing board on health care, which is unfortunate.’ Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) told MSNBC this morning he will advise Democratic leaders to scrap the big bill and move small, more popular pieces that can attract Republicans. And Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) said his leadership is ‘whistling past the graveyard’ if they think Brown’s win won’t force a rethinking of the health care plan.”
Just what caused Brown’s surprise win? To be sure, Coakley could have run a better campaign and the DNC could have come to her aid sooner. But focusing on such election minutiae misses the big point. The nation has gotten a good look at President Obama and doesn’t like what it sees. Period. This election didn’t pit Democrat against Republican. It wasn’t a referendum on big government or reckless and unprecedented spending, although those issues played a minor roll. What the Massachusetts voters rejected was socialism, plain and simple. In the rush of Obama’s first few months he was able to takeover banks and car companies and spend phenomenal amounts of money, but that parade is over.
Republicans, independents and Reagan Democrats voted for liberty yesterday. Therein lies a lesson for Republicans. Most Americans are fed up with business as usual in Washington. Both parties have been guilty of feathering their own nests with a profusion of earmarks and perks. Both parties continue to consolidate power in the nation’s capitol. And, both parties have suffered because of their self-serving ways. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993 the Democrats controlled both Houses of Congress. When he left office 8 years later, the Republicans were in the majority. The same is true of George W. Bush, and Obama is following in his two predecessors’ footsteps.
What the nation wants is more local control, less government, more choice, and more individual responsibility — in other words, conservatism. Those were the issues Scott Brown campaigned on. The result may have surprised the casual observer, but in fact was no fluke. As Ronald Reagan proved, conservatism has deep roots in America. For the Republican Party, this is no time to talk about consensus, coalition building, or reaching across the isle. Now is the time to give American voters what they are clearly clamoring for: conservative candidates espousing conservative policies based on conservative principles. If it can succeed in Massachusetts — and it did – the Republican strategy for the November elections is clear: move to the right, campaign from the right, and govern from the right.