Chris Adamo
Can Obama reinvent his disastrous liberal agenda?
By Chris Adamo
Barack Obama has initiated yet another response to his declining popularity. Only a year into what was once trumpeted as perhaps history's greatest electoral promise of "hope and change," the Obama Administration finds itself on the ropes. The American public is angry and energized as it has not been since 1994, and Democrats in the Senate and House are looking with ever greater apprehension towards the November elections.
Amazingly, every possible excuse is being offered, and new plans for the restoration Obama's public image are floated almost daily. New villains are concocted, while old ones, such as former Vice-President Dick Cheney, are resurrected as the root cause of Obama's problems. Yet the entire leftist political cabal, of which Obama is clearly the ideological head, steadfastly refuses to admit or even acknowledge the true underlying problem, which is the abhorrent nature of the liberalism that they seek to advance.
On February 16, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer announced plans to improve the quality of news being released from the Oval Office. He also spoke of his intention to respond more quickly to Republican criticism. The underlying message was, of course, that the Obama agenda has always been a marvelous scheme and would have been a resounding success, were it not for the eroding effects of those nasty right-wing partisans who simply refuse to give credit where it is due.
Yet such resounding diatribe studiously avoids the truth, since even a brief entanglement with the facts proves devastating to Democrat claims. The squandering of more than a trillion dollars by this Administration, ostensibly as a "stimulus" to the economy, did nothing in that regard. Instead, incomprehensibly vast sums of money somehow ended up being strewn in the general direction of favored groups, such as community agitators (read: ACORN), along with federal, state, and municipal employees, whose ongoing participation in government would hardly "stimulate" any new economic activity, but would ensure that much of the funds will eventually make their way back into Democrat campaign coffers.
Thus the American people, a majority of whom strenuously opposed such ravaging of the national treasury, are not enamored with Obama's glowing rhetoric of how much good has come from the "Stimulus" package. Nor are they willing to accept his incessant self-aggrandizing speeches to that effect. The American economy is still a disaster, and the American people know it. Any efforts to tell them otherwise merely increase their anger and cynicism, causing them to wonder what real ends might be served by such disastrous and obviously counterproductive fiscal policy.
The same conclusion is no less inevitable regarding Democrat environmental policy. Amazingly, though the issue is vastly different, the pattern of liberal involvement remains identical. A calamity of unfathomable proportions is invented by the left and repeated incessantly until a sizeable portion of the public becomes sufficiently panicked to accept the proposed "solution" which inevitably requires taxes to be raised and freedoms to be trampled.
Just as the only "fix" for the ailing economy demands the confiscation of the earnings from Americans and ever stricter limits on their economic options, the planet can only be steered from the path of ecological catastrophe by confiscating still more money from the people and curtailing even more of their freedoms.
We have been there before. And the ploy is beginning to seem very familiar, as the exact pattern of alarmism and governmentally sponsored salvation was also promulgated with regards to the impending "healthcare" crisis. To nobody's great surprise, on yet another front "We the People" are expected to accede to the notion that our liberty and our property, the most direct means of determining our individual futures, must be subordinated and surrendered to the collective interests of the state.
Who knows what "emergency" will descend upon us next. What can however be predicted with great confidence is that the liberal/Democrat response will be the same, namely more taxes and less freedom.
It is against this menacing backdrop that Barack Obama sorely wants to recast himself and his agenda. He would have us all believe that nothing is wrong with his miserably inept governing style, but rather that we, as his subjects, are simply too stupid to recognize his beneficence and wisdom. As a result, he will endeavor on several fronts to change his image, while resolutely maintaining his drive to move America as far to the left as possible.
The upcoming "joint" healthcare summit, to which he solicited the involvement of Republican House and Senate leaders, is no indication of a move to the "middle." Instead, it reflects his hopes that the historically hapless Republicans will once again take the "bait" of bipartisanship and thus give him and his agenda political cover. Ultimately, his intention is as it has always been, to apply any veneer necessary in order to impose socialized "medicine" on a nation that would never willingly accept such a monstrosity.
America can expect much more of the same between now and the mid-term elections, but with increasing intensity. Having lost their filibuster-proof Senate super majority under the most implausible circumstances, Democrats are nonetheless devoted to their leftist/Marxist agenda. Their current hesitance only reflects concerns over how to implement their plan while minimizing voter backlash.
So, in the upcoming months, America can expect a "public relations" campaign the likes of which they have never seen before. "News" stories touting the fiscal and environmental triumphs of left-wing policies have only just begun. Between now and the mid-term elections, their frequency and effrontery will only increase. But, ultimately they will fail. Real America has grown wise to the strategy, and wants no more of it.
© Chris Adamo
February 19, 2010
Barack Obama has initiated yet another response to his declining popularity. Only a year into what was once trumpeted as perhaps history's greatest electoral promise of "hope and change," the Obama Administration finds itself on the ropes. The American public is angry and energized as it has not been since 1994, and Democrats in the Senate and House are looking with ever greater apprehension towards the November elections.
Amazingly, every possible excuse is being offered, and new plans for the restoration Obama's public image are floated almost daily. New villains are concocted, while old ones, such as former Vice-President Dick Cheney, are resurrected as the root cause of Obama's problems. Yet the entire leftist political cabal, of which Obama is clearly the ideological head, steadfastly refuses to admit or even acknowledge the true underlying problem, which is the abhorrent nature of the liberalism that they seek to advance.
On February 16, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer announced plans to improve the quality of news being released from the Oval Office. He also spoke of his intention to respond more quickly to Republican criticism. The underlying message was, of course, that the Obama agenda has always been a marvelous scheme and would have been a resounding success, were it not for the eroding effects of those nasty right-wing partisans who simply refuse to give credit where it is due.
Yet such resounding diatribe studiously avoids the truth, since even a brief entanglement with the facts proves devastating to Democrat claims. The squandering of more than a trillion dollars by this Administration, ostensibly as a "stimulus" to the economy, did nothing in that regard. Instead, incomprehensibly vast sums of money somehow ended up being strewn in the general direction of favored groups, such as community agitators (read: ACORN), along with federal, state, and municipal employees, whose ongoing participation in government would hardly "stimulate" any new economic activity, but would ensure that much of the funds will eventually make their way back into Democrat campaign coffers.
Thus the American people, a majority of whom strenuously opposed such ravaging of the national treasury, are not enamored with Obama's glowing rhetoric of how much good has come from the "Stimulus" package. Nor are they willing to accept his incessant self-aggrandizing speeches to that effect. The American economy is still a disaster, and the American people know it. Any efforts to tell them otherwise merely increase their anger and cynicism, causing them to wonder what real ends might be served by such disastrous and obviously counterproductive fiscal policy.
The same conclusion is no less inevitable regarding Democrat environmental policy. Amazingly, though the issue is vastly different, the pattern of liberal involvement remains identical. A calamity of unfathomable proportions is invented by the left and repeated incessantly until a sizeable portion of the public becomes sufficiently panicked to accept the proposed "solution" which inevitably requires taxes to be raised and freedoms to be trampled.
Just as the only "fix" for the ailing economy demands the confiscation of the earnings from Americans and ever stricter limits on their economic options, the planet can only be steered from the path of ecological catastrophe by confiscating still more money from the people and curtailing even more of their freedoms.
We have been there before. And the ploy is beginning to seem very familiar, as the exact pattern of alarmism and governmentally sponsored salvation was also promulgated with regards to the impending "healthcare" crisis. To nobody's great surprise, on yet another front "We the People" are expected to accede to the notion that our liberty and our property, the most direct means of determining our individual futures, must be subordinated and surrendered to the collective interests of the state.
Who knows what "emergency" will descend upon us next. What can however be predicted with great confidence is that the liberal/Democrat response will be the same, namely more taxes and less freedom.
It is against this menacing backdrop that Barack Obama sorely wants to recast himself and his agenda. He would have us all believe that nothing is wrong with his miserably inept governing style, but rather that we, as his subjects, are simply too stupid to recognize his beneficence and wisdom. As a result, he will endeavor on several fronts to change his image, while resolutely maintaining his drive to move America as far to the left as possible.
The upcoming "joint" healthcare summit, to which he solicited the involvement of Republican House and Senate leaders, is no indication of a move to the "middle." Instead, it reflects his hopes that the historically hapless Republicans will once again take the "bait" of bipartisanship and thus give him and his agenda political cover. Ultimately, his intention is as it has always been, to apply any veneer necessary in order to impose socialized "medicine" on a nation that would never willingly accept such a monstrosity.
America can expect much more of the same between now and the mid-term elections, but with increasing intensity. Having lost their filibuster-proof Senate super majority under the most implausible circumstances, Democrats are nonetheless devoted to their leftist/Marxist agenda. Their current hesitance only reflects concerns over how to implement their plan while minimizing voter backlash.
So, in the upcoming months, America can expect a "public relations" campaign the likes of which they have never seen before. "News" stories touting the fiscal and environmental triumphs of left-wing policies have only just begun. Between now and the mid-term elections, their frequency and effrontery will only increase. But, ultimately they will fail. Real America has grown wise to the strategy, and wants no more of it.
© Chris Adamo
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