Posted by
Bert Chapman on Saturday, October 09, 2010 9:18:12 AM
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, the gatekeeper of presidential access, decides he wants to return to Chicago and run for mayor. In other words, changing from one cesspool of corruption to another. National security advisor James Jones also decides to leave. Key presidential economic advisors such as Christina Romer and Larry Sommers also have left or are about to leave the Obama Administration. The country is deeper in debt, unemployment is up and resistant to the Obama Administration's "magic wand" Keynesian pump priming stimulus, Iran is closer to becoming a nuclear weapons state, elements of Pakistan's military and intelligence services are openly supporting Al Qaida and the Taliban, and our international credibility and respect are oozing down the toilet. Bob Woodward's new book on the administration reveals a president more concerned with appeasing his leftist peacenik base than developing a war winning strategy in Afghanistan. The highly touted "change you can believe in" rhetoric of 2008 has become a sick joke and we are looking at a reprise of the Carter Administration. At least, we've not had a repise of the Iranian hostage crisis yet. On college campuses, many of the imbecilic students who were seduced by the Chicago charlatan are now realizing they face a future of limited employment opportunities and high personal and familial debts because of Obama Administration polices.
In response, Obama and his cultish acolytes are bringing out classical Democratic class warfare rhetoric against Republicans. This administration, from the President on down, is so egocentric that they can't intellectually conceive of the possibility that their policies have created this morass and show the humility to admit their failures. Consequently, they are poised to receive a huge kick in the groin in next month's elections which may result in them losing control of the House and Senate. While some commentators think this may be a replay of the 1994 midterm elections, noted political analyst Michael Barone thinks it's possible that the 1894 midterm elections may be a more appropriate electoral analogy. That year the country was enduring the 1893 panic under Democratic President Grover Cleveland and the electorate responding by increasing Republican representation in Congress by over 100 at a time when there were far fewer representatives and senators than there are today.
Obama, Reid, and Pelosi misinterpreted 2006 and 2008 election results as a sign that Americans were ready to embrace a return to big government policies including increasingly nationalized health care, permitting open military service by gays, bailing out incompetently run financial institutions and government sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae, and allowing the EPA to regulate carbon emissions. They are going to be rudely disappointed when they wake up the morning after the elections. While Republicans need to do a better job of specifically articulating where the country needs to be taken, the energy of the Tea Party has repudiated the post-2008 prognostications of liberal election pontificates that the GOP and American conservatism had been consigned to historical obsolescence and political irrelevance.
American politics are inherently cyclical. The triumph of one political cause or party can be reversed in a very short time thanks to two year congressional elections and other political developments. Even significant Republican gains next month should only result in dancing in the streets for a day. Hard work and tough choices must be made and governance is a serious business. Remember that Bill Clinton was reelected in 1996, despite 1994's glorious triumph, so it's up to us to remember that it will be a long hard struggle to regain the trust of the American people and the presidency in Nov. 2012.