By DEXTER DUGGAN
With the last stones of the temple of Obama worship toppled into the dust by the November 4 midterm elections, questions immediately arose of what would replace the president’s shattered faux Greek columns for the two remaining years of his presidency.
Little room seemed left for hubris, but Barack Obama’s capacity for majestic imaginings has always exceeded his accomplishments. The last thing victorious Republicans should do is extend a hand to reward his failures by helping build up his malign agenda.
Instead, they need to construct positive programs to reward the hopes of rebellious, impatient voters who put the GOP into greater control. Now that both congressional chambers will be under Republican authority, just dare Obama to veto popular legislation.
In fact, the Republican-majority House has presented bill after bill for a vote in the Senate, including restriction of permissive abortion after 20 weeks. But left-wing Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid would stick the legislation in his drawer to die by suffocation rather than even allow a vote on measures he and Obama didn’t like.
Liberally inclined “news” media didn’t bother to report how the legislative process was being frustrated because editors were on the same page as Reid and Obama. If a lot of the public wasn’t aware of what was happening — or even blamed House Republicans for “doing nothing” even though Reid was the culprit — so much the better.
Many politicians’ reputations have risen and fallen in the nation’s capital, none more so than Obama’s.
Obama has gone from the Olympian atmosphere of his Democratic convention acceptance speech in 2008 to the bitter taste of a second massive, humiliating, midterm rejection by the voters.
The liberal London Guardian reported on November 5: “‘This is ugly,’ one top Democrat involved in the party’s election strategy told the Guardian. . . . ‘It is so much worse than we expected’.”
Once again some pollsters had been embarrassingly inaccurate, with “neck and neck” races actually resulting in losers trailing winners by ten points or more, such as for Kansas U.S. senator or Arizona governor. Flipping a coin or throwing dice might be more predictive than this product of decades of statistical analysis and sampling.
Obama began his presidency in 2009 with both chambers of Congress under Democratic control, but he resoundingly lost the House to the Republicans in the 2010 midterms after, among other cynical betrayals, he rammed through destructive, expensive Obamacare with tricks, bribes, and lies.
This month, in his second midterm, the Democrats devastatingly lost the Senate, too, after hordes of more lies.
When the next Congress convenes in January, both chambers will be pro-life, thanks to the arrogance of the repudiated pro-abortion Obama. He’s not so good at scoring goals, but has a certain talent at tossing interceptions that the other team can win with — if it dare cares to.
Republicans racked up not only expected major wins in November 2014 but also numerous surprises, such as — to take just one of many examples — the governorships of liberal Illinois and Maryland.
Make no mistake: Obama could have achieved personal and national greatness if his presidency truly represented the reconciliation and racial healing that he preached in the 2008 campaign.
But that message, like so much that followed, was a complete and total lie, a “community organizer’s” conniving words that people longed to hear but contained no more value than any other soulless huckster’s deceptions. How could we tell when Obama was lying? Simple. If he was breathing, he was lying.
Aside from Obama personally, probably the biggest contributor to his latest stinging defeats was the dominant liberal media, who could have cautioned and warned him so he could adjust course responsibly.
Instead, these media covered up for and stroked him because they still thrilled at the radical agenda he and they both loved — though both of them knew how unpopular it was with the majority of voters.
The United States suffered under not only government by deception but also by stealth — and by judicial dictatorship that created “law” by whims to satisfy the itches of the Obama elite.
It’s no secret that many Democrat politicians chafe under a president whom they view as being concerned only with his ego, not their career welfare or even their party generally.
If they hope to have anything left standing of their party after two more years of Obama in the White House, some senior Democrats should pay him a visit soon, grab him by the metaphorical collar, and slap some sense into his golf-and-Hollywood-and-selfie-obsessed skull.
On a certain issue, for instance, they could say something like: Obama himself knows how opposed many voters are to illegal-immigration “amnesty” because he said he wouldn’t impose it until after the elections. They know how deeply the public resents Obama’s thinking that he can personally rewrite national law, and ignore it when he pleases.
This issue was one that hurt Democrats in 2014. But here he is, again promising to be a lawbreaker defying the public rather than saying he has learned some hard lessons and will take them to heart.
The Democrat leaders could say they know he may not care a whit for them, but if he has a shred of concern for his own legacy among Democrats, he’d better rein himself in.
Commentator Tim Stanley observed in London’s Telegraph on November 5: “In the wake of this wave election, the Democrats will be asking themselves what to do with him. Defend his few legislative accomplishments or denounce him and move on? Expect the latter. Democrats might be collectivists in tax policy but are rugged individualists when it comes to saving their own electoral skins.”
As for the Democrats’ own fixation on “social issues,” Stanley noted: “It turns out that Americans trying to survive on stagnating wages aren’t particularly interested in discussing some liberal’s favorite contraceptive method. Let us hope that the age of Sandra Fluke and Lena Dunham is behind us, that we’ve all grown up enough to realize that subsidizing the sex lives of others is not something that a government should be engaged in.”
Even in generally liberal Oregon, voters overwhelmingly rejected the wedge issue of granting driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The Washington Times reported about the establishment’s push for this “reform”:
“Immigration was a losing issue in the 2014 election, with Republicans who announced their opposition to President Obama’s legalization plans earning victories across the country, and voters in Oregon swatting down a referendum that would have granted driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.
“Republicans said the results should serve as a warning to President Obama, who has said he plans to take unilateral action to grant legal status to illegal immigrants sometime this year,” the Times said.
National radio talkmeister Rush Limbaugh told his audience on November 5, “There was one message being sent last night: Stop Obama.”
Later in the program, Limbaugh added that with Obama having two years yet as president, “It’s scary to think about” what he still may try to do.
Limbaugh said Republicans had won “one of the most important and unquestioned mandates” a political party has been given, but “whether they want to accept the mandate is another question.”
Already the GOP was being urged to work with the Democrats, he said, adding that if the voters wanted the Democrats, they wouldn’t have selected all these Republicans.
And national radio talk host Laura Ingraham said on November 5 that now that Obama has lost across the board, the establishment is saying Republicans have to reward him by working with him on legislation.
Rather than enabling him, Ingraham said, they should use the congressional power of the purse to cut off dollars that could assist amnesty. “I’d cut that money down to the bone,” she said.
New York commentator John Podhoretz told a national election-night radio program that it’s hard to know what Obama will do because “reality doesn’t seem to intrude on the hard shell of his self-regard.”
The following day, conservative pundit Guy Benson said Obama’s post-election comments on November 5 were simply “stay the course,” nothing had changed for him.
Rigid, Radical Ideology
The good news from Obama’s stubbornness is that it weakens him further and empowers Republicans. National radio host Sean Hannity said on November 5 that back in 2008, he had commented that Obama’s “rigid, radical ideology will lead to a new conservative movement.”
Just a month before this midterm, Obama inexplicably told a university audience, “I am not on the ballot this fall….But make no mistake: These policies are on the ballot. Every single one of them.”
Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, has a towering reputation for putting his foot in his mouth twice before breakfast, but Obama had committed a glaring giveaway himself here.
While Democratic candidates desperately sought to avoid association with him, Obama said that when people voted, they’d choose whether to endorse his Democrat policies. Did his ego prompt him to make that plain?
A month later, voters made plain what they thought of that.
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