Fate is fickle, power cyclical, and nothing is new under the sun. Especially in Washington, where after every election the losing party is sagely instructed to confess sin, rend garments and rethink its principles lest it go the way of the Whigs. And where the victor is hailed as the new Caesar, facing an open road to domination.
And where Barack Obama, already naturally inclined to believe his own loftiness, graciously accepted the kingly crown and proceeded to ride his re-election success to a crushing victory over the GOP at the fiscal cliff, leaving a humiliated John Boehner & Co. with nothing but naked tax hikes.
Thus emboldened, Obama turned his inaugural and State of the Union addresses into a left-wing dream factory, from his declaration of war on global warming (on a planet where temperatures are the same as 16 years ago and in a country whose CO2 emissions are at a 20-year low) to the invention of new entitlements e.g., universal preschool for 4-year-olds for a country already drowning in debt.
To realize his dreams, Obama sought to fracture and neutralize the congressional GOP as a prelude to reclaiming the House in 2014. This would enable him to fully enact his agenda in the final two years of his presidency, usually a time of lame-duck paralysis. Hail the Obama juggernaut.
Well, that story excuse me, narrative lasted exactly six months. The Big Mo is gone.
It began with the sequester. Obama never believed the Republicans would call his bluff and let it go into effect. They did.
Taken by surprise, Obama cried wolf, predicting the end of everything we hold dear if the sequester was not stopped. It wasn’t. Nothing happened.
Highly embarrassed, and determined to indeed make (bad) things happen, the White House refused Republican offers to give it more discretion in making cuts. Bureaucrats were instructed to inflict maximum pain from minimal cuts, as revealed by one memo from the Agriculture Department demanding agency cuts that the public would feel.
Things began with the near-comical cancellation of White House tours and ended with not-so-comical airline delays. Obama thought furious passengers would blame the GOP. But isn’t the executive branch in charge of these agencies? Who thinks that a government spending $3.6 trillion a year can’t cut 2% without furloughing air traffic controllers?
Looking not just incompetent at managing budgets but cynical for deliberately injuring the public welfare, the administration relented. Congress quickly passed a bill giving Obama reallocation authority to restore air traffic control. Having previously threatened to veto any such bill, Obama signed.
Not exactly Appomattox, but coming immediately after Obama’s spectacular defeat on gun control, it marked an administration that had lost its “juice,” to paraphrase a charming question at the president’s news conference.
For Obama, gun control was a political disaster. He invested capital. He went on a multicity tour. He paraded grieving relatives. And got nothing. An assault-weapons ban a similar measure had passed the Congress 20 years ago lost 60-40 in a Senate where Democrats control 55 seats. Obama failed even to get mere background checks.
All this while appearing passive, if not helpless, on the world stage. On Syria, Obama was nervously trying to erase the WMD red line he had so publicly established. On Benghazi, he stonewalled accusations that State Department officials wishing to testify are being blocked.
He is even taking heat for the Boston bombings. Every day brings another revelation of signals missed beforehand. And his post-bombing pledge to hunt down those responsible was mocked by the scandalous Mirandizing of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, gratuitously shutting down information from the one person who knows more than anyone about possible still-existent explosives, associates, trainers, future plans, etc.
Now, the screw will undoubtedly turn again. If immigration reform passes, Obama will be hailed as the comeback kid, and a new “Obama rising” narrative proclaimed.
This will overlook the fact that immigration reform has little to do with Obama and everything to do with GOP panic about the Hispanic vote. In fact, Obama has been asked by congressional negotiators to stay away, so polarizing a figure has he become.
Nonetheless, whatever happens, the screw will surely turn again, if only because of media boredom. But that’s the one constant of Washington political life: There are no straight-line graphs. We live from inflection point to inflection point.
And we’ve just experienced one. From king of the world to dead in the water in six months. Quite a ride.
@ David Legrem:
No wonder Obama “won” the presidential election! It should be obvious when voter fraud is so rampant and nothing is done to counter it as long as the votes go to the Dems. and Obama.
David Legrem Said:
@ bahmi:
Bahmi, I am one of the few people I have ever met who actually studied US constitutional law (University of Illinois/Champaign-Urbana, 1961-1962 while earned the first of two university degrees). That meant all significant cases from Marbury vs Madison forward to the early 1960s. For persons of my persuasion, citizen rights to keep and arms, and to use them for protection of home, self and family, precedes all other rights except those of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
We have no intention of fighting against the armed forces of the United States. What we are in fact doing is working to politicize as many as possible of the American owners of the now-estimated 300+ million guns in the possession of what is now estimated to be the majority of American households. Membership in the National Rifle Association (NRA) has risen to past 5 million persons since Obama’s re-election last November. That fool has been the biggest single factor in boosting our NRA. And because he seems so caught up in what he has come to regard as his glorification, that he probably is not aware of that particular political nuance. Emperor Jones of the golf courses is what he is, and I think that is all he ever shall be, even if his claque of liberal admirers try to convince him that he is the Abraham Lincoln of the early 21st century.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
This administration is undermining the great potentials of this unique country. Populism does not encourage greatness. Too bad. This Pr. exhibit a lack of vision.
The great potentials of this country are being undermined by this administration. Populism does not encourage greatness. Too bad. A major lack of vision is what we are witnessing.
@ ArnoldHarris:
Rights to own and carry guns may be only partially substantive. We cannot fight the American war machine, or can we? Guns may be a rallying point, first and foremost. But, a good rallying point is necessary. We must not only move against Obama’s hopes for gun control, we must move against his massive destructive impulses toward our Constitution.
@ David Legrem:
I think you are very correct here, sir. Any of us who thought that this man Obama was our guy were totally wrong, foolishly wrong. Obama is a marked man, he is not just another bought and paid for punk politician, like most other national level politicians. However, when sober minded people finally realize that this man is destroying this nation, they will do the right thing.
To listen to and watch those ignoramus Ohio State University students cheer this Midget of Mendacity when he told them to “not listen to those people who imagine this government is saturated with tyranny”, words to that effect, is painful, indeed. The future of America? Our young people are horribly taught, they are far from the top of the heap when it comes to education. Young punks like this are easy game for Obama and his merry band of liars and cheats. Note that Obama knows these young people are stupid, they comprise the only group of Americans who fall for his jiveass lingo.
Lawsuits about his citizenship are now pending in courts. Sheriff Arpaio is on his case and is close to obtaining indictments against the Kenyan. Dr Orly Taitz is going after this bozo with fury, a sight to see! We are starting to gain traction. We can only hope that we short circuit this destroyer’s march against the American people.
In his article about Obama, Krauthammer focuses in on the failures Obama’s policies, rather than Obama himself. Apparently it’s taboo with Republicans and conservatives to attack Obama himself. Apparently it’s not important that Obama has usurped the presidency using a phony birth certificate, a social security number of someone who died years ago, and a false draft registration. All this as well as presidential actions that would have resulted in impeachment of any other president. I consider Krauthammer another member of the eunuch party.
Irrespective of my self-identity as a Jewish nationalist in the spirit of Rav Meir Kahane, Dr Israel Eldad and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, I am also a hardened member of the American gun culture. The overwhelming majority of the citizens and residents of this country are armed. I am one of the carefully selected men and women who take our leadership cue from the National Rifle Association (NRA) — and as a local NRA election volunteer coordinator in southern Wisconsin — I have been working carefully and diligently for almost 20 years to politicize as many as possible of my fellow gun owners in this country. Any of you who imagine that master strategy has achieved little in the US Congress and among nearly all of the state governments ought to look at the quiet revolution we made here with the concealed-carry enabling legislation in 49 of the 50 US states, the overwhelming majority of which are “shall issue” states, which means that the state shall issue a concealed carry license to any citizen or legal resident who applies and who meets the normative qualifications.
So it should come as no surprise to any of you that we — under the leadership of our NRA — just got through beating the living shit out of President Barack Hussein Obama’s now dead effort to enact federal gun control legislation. The fact is, as a group, we have more power and influence in this country in general and especially in the state legislatures and the US Congress, than this strictly temporary US president. The fact also is that we are self-aware of the national power that gun owners now hold, and that awareness is self-reinforced by the fact that we perceive that Obama knows all this and is tormented by it.
Because of us, among other considerations, Obama’s national stature has shriveled. People are becoming aware that just as he cannot push the US Congress into legislating yet more national spending authorizations, he will not be able get a filibuster-proof liberal majority in the US Senate in the next congressional election, and that a liberal leftist takeover of the US House of Representatives is even less likely than Obama’s shrinking political forces tightening control of the US Senate. Quite frankly, many of us are looking for an opportunity — any opportunity — to impeach Obama, and shred his legacy, even if we think we could not remove him form office.
Here in our State of Wisconsin, a place filled to the brim with gun owners, we elected as governor Scott Walker and a solidly Republican-controlled state legislature, backed up by a conservative controlled state supreme court. Walker has broken the power of the state public employees and teachers unions, and there isn’t one damned thing the leftists can do about that because we outnumber them. And you would be surprised to learn how many other US states are going the same route. Because if we can’t get rid of them at the Federal level, we sure as hell can undercut or even shred their efforts at the state level.
So don’t try preaching to people like me about what you may think is the omnipotence of this Obama and his big-city liberal leftists.
And as for the Latino vote, large numbers of them are beginning to support some of the major Hispanic-heritage Republican figures such as Marco Rubio of Florida. We’ll do just fine with them.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I am listening in the IBA Radio B a program on how will the government and people, all the people, work to cure a deficit gap that resulted out of the idiotic “protests” last year.
The creeps wanted “free stuff” just as their counterparts in the US have been accoustomed to. As a stop gap measure some of the “freebies” were given the parasites.
To avoid harm to the economy which id in fine state there is a need to cut back and levy some extra taxes. It will be done and the parasites, all of them, will be also severely hit by cut backs.
And today Netanyahu, who is basically a brilliant economist, not a PM, is in China to promote sales which the Chinese are very much interested to accept. China has won all the State Tenders for new railroad systems and highways.
About the US. Israel DOES NOT NEED grants, much rather see those used in the US.
Regrettably, the corrective action plan followed in the US is one that “redistributes” non existent production yields. One may increase taxes, but using printing pressess to serve as production sources, is not exactly it.
We pray for and hope that the US citizens, young and old understand what the stakes are.
Samuel Fistel Said:
The Democrats used to control Texas.
How did they lose control in the first place? Did the white population suddenly skyrocket (perhaps by massive numbers of white teenage girls getting pregnant in the ’60’s)?
David Legrem Said:
Did they not do this with Irish, Italians, and Poles a century ago?
Democrats have been buying Latino votes by promising and delivering endless handouts, all financed by the steadily diminishing productive sector of the economy. Now the Demos are working hard to bring in more Latinos.
The Democrats have also set up a solid infrastructure for voting fraud. There was plenty of it in the last election, which featured numerous districts where the number of Democratic votes outnumbered the entire population of the district.
It is hard for me to see how the Republicans can counter.
The balance of power: Obama is the future of America
Currently, the Republicans (read: traditional white christian Americans) are able to keep the Democrats (read: white-hating liberal whites allied with white-hating blacks, latinos and asians) in check, by barely controlling the House, and keeping the Democrats from a 60 seat supermajority in the Senate.
But the Democrats are steadily marching towards permanent victory. Democrats have more kids than Republicans. The Republicans are older than the Democrats and are dying off. The current Republican majority in the House has only been attained by a trick of gerrymandering.
The last great Republican State, Texas, is already only 45% white, 40% latino and 15% black. The Republicans only win in Texas because the whites vote heavily, and uniformly, in favor of the Republicans, while the latinos traditionally have lower turnout.
But latino numbers are growing, and latinos will soon outnumber whites in Texas. And this does not take into account the tens of millions of illegal aliens (strike that) “undocumented workers” who will soon become full voting citizens, along with their children.
And most of all, Republicans have NOTHING to offer latinos and blacks. Democrats offer them full amnesty and unlimited welfare, with no concern for the deficit, while the Republicans can only counter with limited amnesty and limited welfare.