Obama’s Road To Ruin
A wise judge once wrote in dissent that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. Let us now extend that wisdom to presidential elections.
Barack Obama says his election victory is a mandate to pursue the policy course he’s insisting on in negotiations with Republicans on the fiscal cliff. He wants a tax increase of $1.6 trillion, $50 billion of new and immediate stimulus spending and the end of congressional approval to raise the ceiling on U.S. debt—the debt that a ratings agency downgraded in 2011.
The campaign stump speech in which Mr. Obama demanded that Congress cede him control over the debt ceiling slips my mind. But we all recall his repeated cries for increasing taxes on “the wealthiest” ($200,000 individual/$250,000 joint), so arguably he has a claim to that. Consequences do come with the democratic habit of holding elections.
But if that is true, then Republicans are justified in citing the consequences of the message of the midterm election held a mere two years ago. In 2010, the Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives. Less noted but as important in measuring the nation’s desires, that election gave the GOP control of the largest number of state legislatures it had held since 1928. A similar surge occurred for Republican governors.
Last time I looked, the progressive movement still hadn’t turned Washington, D.C., into the only political jurisdiction of consequence in the United States. The message of the 2010 election, for Republicans anyway, was unambiguous: Slow down the runaway public-spending train, the spending train that caused the nation’s voters to torch and punish Republicans in the 2006 midterms.
On the available evidence, a Republican who forgets those recent elections is headed for retirement. So naturally Barack Obama wants John Boehner and the Republicans in control of the House to forget those elections.
Bear in mind as we spend the holidays on this precipice, that the “fiscal cliff” wasn’t born yesterday. It crawled out of its crypt in late 2011, after the Republican leadership and Mr. Obama—the deficit-reduction “super committee”—failed to negotiate essentially the same deal they are failing to get done now.
The inability of this Congress and this president to compromise on anything, now or at any time in the past four years, is itself a problem worthy of some thought.
Here’s one thought: The main reason there isn’t, and may never be, a solution on the fiscal cliff is that Barack Obama doesn’t know how to do a political compromise. Where in his career did Barack Obama ever learn the art of the political deal? Nowhere.
Recall the famous Blair House summit he called early in 2010 amid the legislating over ObamaCare. Lamar Alexander, Tom Coburn, Paul Ryan and other Republicans talked about wonkish compromises. All of it, every single idea, blew right by the president. Naturally the legislation got zero GOP votes. A kid running for high-school president could have gotten more opposition votes than that.
Presidents, kings, queens, generals all have accomplished a modus vivendi with their opponents and mortal enemies. Until now. What deal of Clintonesque majesty has Barack Obama ever pulled off?
The fiscal-cliff negotiation is a train driven by an engineer who doesn’t know how to use the brake, doesn’t know where the brake is and doesn’t care. His idea of politics is giving campaign speeches outside Washington to assemble a Sandy of public sentiment that will blow congressional Republicans off the cliff.
Politics ain’t beanbag, but it also isn’t just about politics. While Barack Obama may think his election mandate includes the ruin of the Republican Party, Republicans seeking a strategy of self-preservation should assert their refusal to participate in the ruin of the nation. As it is, the fiscal cliff has degenerated into a familiar Beltway melodrama in which the media reduce the whole thing to which party gets shafted. As to the health of the gasping American economy, well, whatever.
Conventional wisdom holds that the sequester is a mindless anti-spending Godzilla. But the sequester, because it is set in legislative stone, possesses what Washington today lacks with the public: credibility.
The only issue on the cliff negotiation table held true by every serious person is that the entitlement crisis is going to crush the country. But nothing is dearer to this president than higher taxes on people defined by him as the wealthiest. If the president’s DNA prevents him from a compromise that also includes a sequester-strength commitment to disarming the entitlement bombs, much less discretionary spending, take the sequester. Better the fiscal cliff than pitching the American people over the bottomless entitlement cliff.
Liberal commentators like to cite Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill as a case study in political compromise. Barack Obama has become a case study of a president unable to compromise—with John Boehner or anyone else. The sense here is that as the cliff approaches, more people are beginning to understand this grim reality.
By Daniel Henninger
This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
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He knows what he’s doing. He WANTS to destroy the US, introduce Marxist governmental practices and create a Soviet worker’s paradise. We know how that ended up for the Soviet workers. When are we going to wake up and see the evidence of this man’s attempted to fulfill his real father’s dreams of Marxist overthrow of the government? WAKE UP AMERICA!!
An engineer who doesn’t know how to use the brake and doesn’t know where it is? Of course he knows where it is, but with his real father Frank Marshall Davis, a card carrying Marxist, having been not only his genetic father, but a stalwart teacher of Marxist rhetoric and tactics, and Obama’s own admission of being Muslim (which he tactically attempted to dismiss upon rebuttal from his interviewer) and his bowing before Muslim rulers in the Middle East and never doing so before European royalty, then surely it is not such a stretch of logic to figure out he represents both of the arms of the worst enemies of western civilization we experienced in the last century. When has a Marxist failed to announce he would overthrow the west? When has a Muslim failed to claim the goal of destruction of the west? When Pope John Paul II, Reagan and Margaret Thatcher destroyed Soviet communism with Lech Walesa’s expert assistance, little did we know it would re-erupt in our own nation under the guise of “change.” Pity the liberals never bothered to understand what “change” really meant, nor ponder its logical conclusions, but that’s the liberal “mind” for you. Reagan said it all back in 1964, “We’re at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars. And it’s been said if we lose that war and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening. Well, I think it’s time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers.”
We don’t, do we?
I must point out thet I didn’t vote for Obama in either election, for 2 different reasons:
1) election # 1- Not enough experience in politics.
2) election # 2- Failed policies, deficit spending
resulting in our nation’d downgrade in int’l
credit.
Although I find him to be (probably) the best public speaker I have EVER heard, it is all political rhetoric. This has resulted in an almost uncountable amount of broken promises to various groups that inexpicably supported him in election #2.
His record from term #1 clearly showed that he couldn’t compromise. I haven’t seen any evidence of this changing to date. Hopefully in 4 years we can have a President that can DELIVER “Hope and Change”. It’s obvious that this one can’t.
He has no experience with economics . Entitlements must be reigned in. He is a community activist period.
If Obama the Marxist is the best speaker you ever heard, you obviously never heard the greatest speech ever, one by Charlie Chaplin. It’s spectacular and patriotic, nothing this Commie Extraordinaire has EVER said is patriotic. He’s no longer a closer commie, he’s got the support of the monied jews, famous for communism, and he’s got a Congress that is comprised of pinkos that are partisan beyond belief. We are full of America haters in this country, those in politics are destroying this nation. Obama’s speeches may be given with some degree of skill, but listen CAREFULLY to their content. It is bloviation nonsense that anybody with half a brain realizes is drivelous garbage. Obama is a spectacularly successful demagogue and the 47 percenters on the government teat surely realize they know nothing about Obama’s intentions but sure do love those China made cellphones. America, the land of exceptional idiots who came through America’s commie steeped school systems. Now, the Feds want to totaly control content of our schools curricula and textbooks. Just imagine what YOUR most fabulous speaker would say about this! Obama is spectacularly evil, the scourge of this entire world. He’s the handmaiden of the monied Tarantulas. A vicious and murderous individual, yes, he’s YOUR favorite speaker, how nice.
What a state we’re in! Obama has consistenly cried out that he can, and will, bring change to our nation. Well I can certainly see where he has done that, and done it well. Instead of making us a richer nation, we are now seriously in debt. Trillions of dollars are charged daily to China. Social Security is in a horrible mess and our younger ones now wonder if there will even be such a thing when they get ready to retire. Costs of medicine and health care have sky rocketed, and seniors often have to choose between food and prescriptioins. Instead of getting cheaper, the costs seem to rise at an alarming rate. Gas prices are a constant problem. If there is so much oil stored out in the Gulf, as we’ve been told, then why do we have to buy it from other countries and then spiral into a gas war as filling stations battle for the best price? Wake up, America! See the handwriting on the wall—we are in a critical position to be taken-over by China at any moment. Other nations just wait in the wings to see which ones gets the spoils! I can’t remember ever having been hated by nations (as well as people) around the world as much as we have been since the previous administration, and, sadly, here we go again. Unfortunately, “CHANGE” does not take on the same meaning for him as it does for some of us. We need change for the better. We’ve been torn down by previous leaders as they’ve given away pieces of our precious land, and caused us to be the laughing stock of the world as scandalus behaviour has appeared on the front page of every nation. The Pledge of Allegience is no longer allowed to be said in our classrooms, or ANY thoughts of the Bible allowed in any place other than chuch. No longer are our children allowed to speak a prayer over their meals in school. Sadly, these omissions are causing us to have a generation which no longer has respect for themselves, let alone others. We need leaders who can stand up and speak for the Americans with pride and fortitude, remembering that they are to speak OUR wishes and needs instead of their own. Sadly, most often they are only there to make themselves look better, or to quietly pull the Comministic way of life down upon us. We need to take that close look that Michael Janket (above) spoke of and learn what the word “change” is realy all about! Politicians have aleady lined their pockets with the gold made by the Average Joes of this country through sweat and toil with backs broken down under the name of “change”. One person can make that change by joining one by one as One Nation UNDER GOD. This nation was founded upon change as George Washington led the colonies into breaking away from suppression, domination, and starvation from their old ways of life. It now seems that what our Fore Fathers fought so hard for has been lost on the present administration. Gone is the strong point of letting God be at the foremost point in leadership; gone is helping OUR nation before spending billions of dollars on other nations while we continue to have a debt that has spiraled out of control. They want God out of the equasion, and calling out for communistic rule instead. Come on America! It’s time we became a grounded nation again and stop letting hate rule us. It’s time to reach out to help our own, whether it be seniors, children or just the Average Joe trying and struggling to get by. Other nations are prospering while they sit and laugh at us for being such complete idiots. We are a nation that is spoiled and lathargic as we stand by and let politicians from the top down take over every fiber of our being and making the decisioins for our lives. STOP! It’s time to take back our freedom. It was given to us with blood, sweat and tears by our Fore Fathers. Get it back before it’s too late!