By Douglas V. Gibbs
It's the economy, stupid! - To borrow a phrase.
You're not in Kansas anymore. The days of being a community organizer does not work the second time around, because unlike 2008, now you have a record for people to refer to, and honestly, Mr. Obama, your record is filled with failure.
The economy did not rebound in a meaningful way under your flawed Keynesian strategies, and it is obvious by the wild tactics your administration is beginning to undertake, that the President Barack Obama team realizes that the economy won't be rebounding in any meaningful way before November 2012. Even the president's own budget office predicts unemployment will stay up, spending will continue to increase at alarming rates, and job creation will remain anemic. Not exactly the recipe for a successful run for a second term.
Meanwhile, the Tea Party has come to heavily influence the Grand Ol' Party, which means that the Republican candidates are focusing on spending cuts, tax cuts, and fiscal responsibility. Obama's goose is already cooked with his failed first term as it is, but with no hope of recovery in the next year, and an opponent standing for all of the things the voters are looking for, it has dang-near become an "anybody but Obama" kind of campaign.
The Republican Party's worst candidates are still far better than ol' big ears.
The hope and change of 2008 has become "I hope we can change this downward skid in 2012." All of that community organizing rhetoric, the cult of personality tactics, and the big ol' grin and twinkle in the eye, will not work this time.
Voters expect results, and Obama is so bad that he even makes Jimmy Carter look good.
Now, more truth is bubbling to the surface. The unemployment rate, when all of the manipulations and half-truths are peeled away, is actually flirting with (if not over) 20% unemployment (U-6, for example), mixed into Obama's rhetoric of cutting spending is plans to spend drastically more, in his threats that the GOP plans to cut medicare is the reality that the Obamacare law cuts medicare drastically in ways the Republicans never fathomed, Republicans have brought attention to the ponzi scheme that is Social Security and voters are now becoming more interested in reform, and the Fast and Furious scandal where the Obama administration sold U.S. made weapons to the drug cartels is becoming a thorn in the side of the administration that Obama's cronies have been unable to simply wave away.
That's not even considering all of the broken promises to Barry's base. We never completely left Iraq, he accelerated Afghanistan, a conflict in Libya was heaped on top of that pile of military action around the world, Guantanamo Bay prison is still open, there has been no significant legislation regarding immigration reform, the gays have been put on the back burner, and the only uniting of America Obama has accomplished is uniting more people against him.
With all of those failures, however, the big one remains the economy. Results to Obama's promises of lowering unemployment rates, creating shovel-ready jobs, and overall prosperity, has failed to materialize. People are not only no better than they were three years ago, in most cases they are worse off. The unemployment rate is expected to catch up to reality, and will be the highest during the presidential election than it has been since 1940.
About all Obama has going for him is a well-funded campaign.
The fact is, the voter is not stupid, and they are attentive when the GOP candidates talk about lowering taxes, cutting spending, reducing private-sector-killing regulations, and reforming programs to a level of some kind of sanity. The democrats call the Republican's plans "slash-and-burn politics." The voters call it common sense.
Democrats know it is the economy's failure to rebound that will destroy their chances, so the leftists have already gone into attack mode. In addition to continuing to blame Bush for everything, they are trying to blame the Republicans for the nation's stalled job growth and recent downgrade of U.S. creditworthiness, hoping that the voters won't remember that the Democrats had full control of both Houses of Congress until early this year, and control of the presidency, so as much as the democrats want to make it the GOP's fault, the Republicans didn't have the votes to stall liberal plans.
As for the liberal madness that didn't go through, and did actually stall in Congress, that was not because of the GOP - that was because of in-fighting among the Democrats.
Obama is like a knight with so many holes in his armor he might as well take the outer shell off. He loses if he gets dragged into a debate about deficit spending, he loses when job creation becomes the topic (after all, as Romney said last Friday, "President Obama oversaw an economy that created zero jobs last month, and that is unacceptable"), he loses if he says he wants to raise taxes (not only because it is unpopular, but because it completely contradicts his last campaign), and any of the other issues (like immigration and marriage) Obama comes off either as an extreme leftist, or a failure in addressing those issues (depending on who you are talking to).
As for those independent voters, the liberal democrats are convinced that the independent voters are easily alienated by any of that rightwing stuff (as if an extreme shift to the left won't alienate them), but in reality the independents are largely ideologically driven. Most independents consider themselves conservative, and are independent because they are angry at the liberal-light the Republican Party seemed to have become before the influence of the Tea Party frame of mind.
While thinking the independents will run away from the GOP once the Republicans reveal their positions (of which the democrats call "extreme"), what will really happen is that because of the new conservative shift of the Republican Party, the independents will run to the GOP, happy to get away from the extreme socialist positions of the democrats.
The more conservative the Republican, and the sharper the contrast with democrats they can illustrate, the better the chance to win for the GOP.
All the Republican candidates have to do is showcase how the democrats refuse to cut spending, refuse to abandon the idea of increasing taxes, and refuse to let the wealthy producers of this nation do what it takes to turn this country around by government getting out of their way (which includes a much needed reduction in regulations against the business sector).
Government can't create jobs. Government can't create an economy where people can get decent jobs. Government does not create innovation. All of that is done by the private sector. As long as the democrats continue to hog-tie the producers of this nation, the economy will continue to flounder.
The Republicans message must be, "Let's return to the policies that made this nation great." The GOP must expose the democrat's desire that we become more like the European nations with big government, high spending, and a secular stranglehold on freedom. Europe is flailing in their failure. The countries are doing all they can to get away from what the Democrats want to establish in America. Those policies are failed policies, and the voters know it. The GOP simply has to keep reminding the voters that despite all of the attacks, and lies, the Left embraces those same failed policies that has collapsed Greece, Italy, Spain, Ireland (and the list goes on and on and on).
Even the polls, which tend to be skewed leftward due to the media's influence and manipulation, are beginning to reveal the reality of Obama's troubles. A Pew Research poll found that 52 percent of independents disapprove of the job Obama is doing. An AP-GfK poll showed a sharp erosion of support for Obama among white voters and women. Less than half of all women and less than half of all men approve of the job he's doing, and only 50 percent of women say he deserves re-election.
Many of the polls, however, also show that far more voters blame former President George W. Bush more than Obama for the nation's economic woes. That is what the Left is banking on. They are hoping that despite the fact that things have worsened under Obama's watch, and despite that he has been at the helm approaching three years, they hope the sentiment that it is somehow all Bush's fault lingers for 16 more months.
Obama's plan is also to unleash a tactic he used in 2008. He will work on the young voters who are still easily influenced by a cult of personality, and less by reality and the facts. Despite all of his failures, Obama will try to do as he did in 2008 and paint the future with rainbows and unicorns. He will preach that he is fighting for a future with jobs and social justice for the various groups he abandoned during his first term.
And yes, there will be a number of fools that will believe the B.S. (including, and especially, the gullible gays).
The "groups" don't realize what he is doing. They don't realize they are simply useful idiots to the Left. The democrats separate Americans into groups, create conflict between the groups and any opposition to the liberal agenda, and then use the class warfare they create to their advantage to secure votes.
They promise equality by convincing groups they are not being treated exactly equal, they pay the poor to stay poor and then tell them they are poor because of the opposition... in other words, the democrats buy votes with these tactics.
The people know what the democrats are up to. The Left buys votes with promises to groups, rather than addressing America as one group, as a group of Americans - as conservatives tend to do.
The real tale of the tape, however, is the fact that not only has independents been turned off my Obama's ideological extremism, and the Republican voters will be coming out in droves excited by the influence on the party by the Tea Party, but that Obama will also have to deal with the extreme frustration among his liberal base supporters. The liberal left nuts feel Obama has been too quick to compromise, and if he doesn't get them to shake that feeling, that will equate out to less votes for Obama.
Obama knows that liberalism does not win elections. He sounded dang-near like a conservative in 2008, promising tax cuts and responsible fiscal policies. Obama is already beginning to shift away from liberalism to save any chance he may have for reelection.
Examples of Obama's attempt to sound less liberal in the approaching election season includes yanking a proposal to tighten federal smog standards, moderating on questions about the environment, spending a little more time praising the military members he loathes so much, and of course downplaying his spending tendencies while promising reduced spending and fiscal sanity.
But all that is doing is pissing off his liberal base even more.
Of course, Obama will try to use the fall of Gadhafi, and the capture of Osama bin Laden, to his advantage. But that is all a moot point, for as I stated earlier, it's all about the economy, stupid.
Obama's only chance is if the American people begins to feel that his policies have created an opportunity for the economy to grow in the near future.
And that would take some real magical community organization skills, and razz-a-matazz in his glorious speeches.
In other words, Obama's only chance to win reelection is to fool the voters into not believing in reality.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
Zero August Job Growth Reflects Anti-Business, Red Tape Climate in Washington - Competitive Enterprise Institute
Obama Administration Abandons Stricter Air-Quality Rules - New York Times
The Fast and Furious Scandal Continues - Heritage Foundation
Unemployment Empty Promise - Heritage Foundation
Zero New Jobs in America - Heritage Foundation
Gallup Finds Unemployment Up In August - Gallup
REAL UNEMPLOYMENT RATE ABOVE 20% NOT 9.1% - The Freedom Fighter's Journal
The President's Dilemma - Rush Limbaugh
Barack Obama: The Single Biggest Destroyer of Jobs in US History - Rush Limbaugh
No comments:
Post a Comment