Democrats Confounded by Voter Frustration

Mere weeks ahead of the congressional midterms elections in November, many Americans are no longer able to "think clearly" because of the economic malaise they are suffering. According to President Barack Obama the burden is on Democrats "to break through the fear and the frustration people are feeling."

"Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hardwired not to always think clearly when we're scared," Obama said on Saturday during a fundraiser event, Politico reports.

The president and his party have been lambasting the opposition for supposedly tapping into that fear. "The biggest mistake we can make right now," said Obama, "is to go back to the very same policies that caused this mess in the first place." With the economic recovery stalling and Democratic candidates across the country distancing themselves from the administration's landmark legislative achievements---health care and financial reform---its new message of "hope" is apparently that Republicans will do even worse if elected.

There is certainly a lot of anger on the right. The huge electoral defeats of 2006 and 2008 left the Republican Party rather without direction, allowing loud and controversial opinion makers as Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to fill an ideological void.

What restored coherence to conservative America was the interventionist economic agenda of the Obama Administration. Tea Party activists rallied against health care reform. Stalwart Republicans once again championed constitutional conservatism. Libertarian candidates and congressmen as Rand Paul of Kentucky and Paul Ryan of Wisconson won primary elections and crusaded for less government in the immediate aftermath of a crisis that Democrats blamed on the free market.

Presuming that unbridled greed and unregulated capitalism caused the downturn, it is difficult for Democrats to understand why millions continue to oppose their Big Government solutions. Even BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico this summer wouldn't convince tea partiers. White House chief of staff at the time, Rahm Emanual alleged that Republicans saw BP as the aggrieved party under the circumstances, not local fishermen. "They think that the government's the problem," he exclaimed in disbelief.

The whole Tea Party phenomenon was not taken very seriously by Democrats initially. Since it became evident that the Tea Parties were a force to be reckoned with however, as they marched by the hundreds of thousands and helped elect populist candidates in GOP primary elections, the left has been quick to label them as radical and extremist.

Since the start of this year, different commentators and lawmakers have alleged or suggested that the Tea Parties are racist. A recent study by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which is an organization critical of fringe and racist movements, entitled Tea Party Nationalism, "found Tea Party ranks to be permeated with concerns about race and national identity and other so-called social issues," contrary to the movement's self proclaimed focus on government excess. "Tea Party organizations have given platforms to anti-Semites, racists, and bigots," according to the report. The MSNBC documentary Rise of the New Right further tied anti-government protests to militias and fanatics, conveying the notion that the whole of this "new" right is inclined to violence or at least willing to sanction it.

On the campaign trail in April 2008, Obama said that he understood how people could become embittered and "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them" in times of economic hardship. Since then, millions more Americans have lost their jobs while government stimulus measures have delivered little more than trillion dollar deficits.

Democrats meanwhile continue to blame Republican policies for the "mess" America is in and warn that their return to power will only herald greater inequity and despair. The White House is now theorizing that "secret foreign money" is paying for Republican campaign advertisements and the president himself doesn't even talk about health care anymore.

Less than two years after promising "hope and change," Obama and his party don't appear to have much of a message, let alone vision, for the upcoming elections anymore---which are a referendum on the presidency whatever the administration may like to pretend. Democrats' inability and unwillingness to defend their own policy record of the past two years is a dismal sign of weakness and failure, one Republicans eagerly exploit. Democrats don't seem to understand why people are so upset. The president said it best in April of this year when he talked about Tea Party protesters. "I think they should be saying thank you."

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, October 9, 2010.

O'Donnell: China Conniving to Take Over USA

I like the Tea Party. Really. But Republican Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell from Delaware is making it harder every day for me to take her seriously.

From Politico:

Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O'Donnell once claimed to have classified information showing that China was plotting to conquer the United States.

China had a "carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over America" O'Donnell said during a 2006 Senate primary debate [...]

When her opponent pointed out that China and the US were so economically interdependent that an aggressive move of that kind on the part of China would make no sense, O'Donnell accused him of appeasement.

"A country that forces women to have abortions and mandates that you can only have one child and will not allow you the freedom to read the Bible, you think they can be our friend?" she said. "We have to look at our history and realize that if they pretend to be our friend it's because they've got something up their sleeve."

Such fantasies are no more than silly in the average person but a United States Senate candidate should know better. Christine O'Donnell should not be elected.

Obama: Don't Lose Hope

The president's message to voters: keep on hoping.

Reagan Knew

Via RedState:

Warming Up For a Republican Victory

The Republican Governors Associations has put out another add reminding voters about the upcoming midterm elections and their supposed significance.



As much as I oppose the wave of Big Government programs and spending enacted under this administration, let's not forget though that Republicans are not without blame. Until about two years ago, they were the big spenders. It was the Bush Administration that pushed for homeownership and in effect caused the financial meltdown, simultaneously dragging America into two expensive wars, one of which was, by any account, unnecessary, if not a strategic blunder.

The Republican Party should embrace the libertarian sentiment of the Tea Party movement and should return to its constitutional conservative roots but it can't make a claim yet to being the party of limited government and respect for civil liberties mere years after launching the Iraq War and passing the PATRIOT Act.

Although the ad correctly identifies the problem as relying too much on government in Washington and too little on the potential of individual citizens, for understandable political reasons, it still likes to portray Republican lawmakers as Guardians of the Constitutions who will make everything right. The real change must come in people's entitlement mentality which has allowed government to grow so exponentially in recent years. A simple Republican victory this fall won't accomplish that, especially not if the party continues to accept that government has a place in education, health care and welfare.

All Anger On the Republican Front

The Democrats may be falling in the polls and President Barack Obama is certainly unpopular but the Republicans have no reason to take their newfound success for granted. To the contrary. The party has now to stop boasting and define its vision of twenty-first century conservatism lest it risk being thrown into the opposition again in 2012.

Two years after the end of neoconservatism and the defeat of "maverick" John McCain, the Republican Party remains without direction and without leadership. The most visible and most vocal of political figures on the right, Sarah Palin, may have been embraced in part by the Tea Party movement but the conservative base at large hardly considers her a viable candidate for the presidency.

Republicans have a tough legacy to reckon with. Opposition to Obama's favoring of Big Government and his administration's war on capitalism are ample cause for consternation with the political right yet it were the Republicans who initiated the spending frenzy under President George W. Bush. They have still to decide whether to capitalize on the more libertarian sentiments currently shaping the popular right as represented by the Tea Parties and Glenn Beck or to stick to the ideas that used to bear fruit.

Solid attempts at redefining American conservatism have been made. The call for constitutional conservatism was cheered by a series of Republican stalwarts last February; Tea Party candidates like Rand Paul of Kentucky are winning Senate nominations; Congressmen like Ron Paul and Paul Ryan continue to crusade for the free market. But the party on the whole fears that it may alienate part of its traditional base when it moves toward a more libertarian direction.

Both major parties in the United States are broad and inclusive by necessity. Whereas, in European terms, Democrats can be anything from socialists to centrists, the Republican Party has moderates, business conservatives or Rockefeller Republicans, libertarians and neoconservatives along with the Christian Right and the sort of intolerant, gun toting blowhards personified in the likes of Rush Limbaugh. Mainstream Republicanism in recent years has been fueled by religious sentiments, nostalgia, "family values" and promises of security and strong defense. Today, the small government philosophy of the party is what ties the aforementioned groups together---except that the alliance of evangelicals and neoconservatives which twice made Bush president in recent years has little to show for in this regard.

A fierce apprehension of anything the Democrats do is all that appears to unite the right. So, according to The Economist, Republicans are reducing themselves into exactly what the Democrats say they are---the Party of No. They may well lambast Obama for expanding the deficit, notes the newspaper; "it is less impressive when they are unable to suggest alternatives."

Out of power, a party can get away with such negative ambiguity; the business of an opposition is to oppose. The real problem for the political right may well come if it wins in November. Just as the party found after it seized Congress in 1994, voters expect solutions, not just rage.

The paper fears that electoral success in November may lead Republicans to think that they lost the White House because John McCain was not conservative enough. "That logic is more likely to lead to Palin-Huckabee in 2012 than, say, Petraeus-Daniels." The Economist reminds Americans that British Conservatives made the same mistake when New Labour cast them out of power in 1997. "Only with the accession of the centrist David Cameron in 2005 did the party begin to recover as he set about changing its rhetoric."

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, July 4, 2010.