The State of Our Union

Ed Feulner, The Foundry, Heritage.org

 

The President of the United States tomorrow will inform the Congress on the State of our Union, as he is constitutionally mandated to do. The past 12 months have seen our country head down a dangerous course, and The Heritage Foundation can only hope that the President will use this time of reflection, coming on the heels of a stunning electoral loss, to change direction.

 

You must recognize, Mr. President, that the State of the Union is not good. You need a new approach and fresh domestic and foreign policies. The caps on spending, which reports last night said you were considering are but an exceedingly modest first step, and the devil is in the details. The caps will do virtually nothing to improve the nation’s fiscal health unless you tackle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Shifting tactics and stoking populism will be both cynical and condescending to the voters, who will see through this strategy. Mr. President, it’s the policies you need to change, not the spin. Read article.

James Taranto, WSJ.com

 

How did Barack Obama manage to kick off his presidency by making exactly the same disastrous mistake Bill Clinton made 16 years earlier? One answer is that Obama thought Clinton's health-care errors were tactical rather than strategic, and that correcting these--by letting Congress write the bill, or by cutting deals with industry groups in exchange for their support--would be sufficient to ensure success.

 

But if Rep. Marion Berry is right, the answer may be as simple as sheer hubris. Berry, an Arkansas Democrat first elected in 1996, announced over the weekend that he won't seek re-election. In an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, reprinted by Politico, Berry, who was an "aye" in the House's 220-215 vote for ObamaCare Nov. 7, recounts his unsuccessful efforts to persuade the White House to pursue more moderate policies:

 

Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs "off into that swamp" of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.

"I've been doing that with this White House, and they just don't seem to give it any credibility at all," Berry said. "They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, 'Well, the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me.' We're going to see how much difference that makes now."

"You've got me." In fairness, one can see why Obama might have been overly impressed with himself. Here's a guy who became president of the United States just four years out of the Illinois Senate, and along the way developed a cultlike following. It sounds as though Obama became a follower as well as figurehead of his own cult of personality. He overestimated the degree to which he was special as opposed to lucky--a very human failing. Read article.

Mark Steyn, NRO.com

 

So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”

 

But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”

 

Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He only gave (according to CBS News’s Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president — and maybe more than all of them put together.

 

But what will the president be saying in all these extra interviews? In that interview about how he hadn’t given enough interviews, he also explained to George Stephanopoulos what that wacky Massachusetts election was all about:

 

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” said Obama. “People are angry and they’re frustrated, not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

 

Got it. People are so angry and frustrated at George W. Bush that they’re voting for Republicans. In Massachusetts. Boy, I can’t wait for that 159th interview.

 

Presumably, the president isn’t stupid enough actually to believe what he said. But it’s dispiriting to discover he’s stupid enough to think we’re stupid enough to believe it. Read article.

Thomas Del Beccaro, Big Government.com

 

These may well be the times that try the souls of Democrat politicians.

 

In the year since Obama took the oath of office, the fortunes of the Democrat Party have changed substantially. Voters, especially Independent voters, now favor Republicans on many issues and in Rasmussen’s Generic Congressional Ballot by 9%. Entrenched Senate Democrats like Christopher Dodd and Byron Dorgan are retiring and now – in no small irony – in the election heard ‘round the world, Scott Brown, campaigning against ObamaCare was elected to “Kennedy’s seat.”

 

It has been a remarkable turnaround – yet the worse is yet to come for Democrats in office.

 

Keep in mind that voters turned out the Republicans in 2006 and 2008 in large part because they spent too much, reformed too little and ran up the deficit into the $400 billion range. By the end of the Bush Presidency, economic troubles were mounting and the Republicans had no clear plan for a national recovery.

 

Today, the incidence of buyer’s remorse for voters over Barack is mounting for all the same reasons and more. Unemployment is at double digits, government reform has been abandoned in favor of unprecedented government spending and the deficit is in the $1.5 trillion range. All of that, with no meaningful recovery in site.

 

Beyond that, the President has his Party in the stickiest of wickets known to you as the Health Care debate. By allowing Pelosi and Company to write the bill, Obama lost control of the process and now public opposition to the bill is at an all time high. Even so, the Democrat leadership still promises to push it – whether we like it or not.

 

That is, at least until Scott Brown came around. Read article.

 

Bradley Blakeman, FOXNews.com

 

The American people are more than disappointed with the “change” they got this past year and are worried about their future and the condition of the economy.

 

The stunning upset in Massachusetts should send shock waves through the Democratic Party nationwide. The people have spoken, yet again, with the election of Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate and as such, have soundly rejected the leadership of the president and the Democratically-controlled Congress.

 

The elections in Virginia and New Jersey this past November should have been a wake-up call for Democrats. Democratic candidates were defeated because the people thought the candidates, like the leadership of the Democratic Party, were out of touch with the needs of the citizenry. While Republicans focused on the economy, job creation, deficit reduction and responsibility, Democrats were bogged down -- almost exclusively -- on health care, blaming Bush and defending their failed economic policies.

 

What a difference a year makes. In January of 2009, Obama supporters and many in the media thought they were witnessing a messianic politician’s ascent to the presidency. The Democrats in January of 2009 thought they would rule for 40 years. They took the election of 2008 as a “mandate” to do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Then reality set in.

 

The Democrats set forth an agenda that was 180 degrees opposite of what needed to be done and what the American people wanted to see done. Read article.

 

Barry Rubin, Gloric-Center.org

 

There is an iron rule in modern democratic politics that parties periodically ignore to their peril: if a party goes too far to an extreme--to the left, the right, or any other far-out viewpoint--the voters reject it. This is what's now happening in the United States. One wonders whether, or when, it will happen in a number of European countries.

 

In the United States, the most obvious examples is when the Democrats went too far to the left with George McGovern and the Republicans went too far to the right with Barry Goldwater they suffered tremendous defeats. Many other examples can be cited from Europe, Israel, and other countries.

 

Another point that should be kept in mind is that when political and media-cultural elites in democratic countries become too arrogant and detached from their people they are in for a reminder of how that system works. One of the most disturbing features of contemporary life is that those who dissent from the Politically Correct, multicultural dogmas are quickly labelled as evil, stupid, or crazy. By denying the rationality of different viewpoints, the possibility of usefull dialogue, compromise, and course modifications is lost.

 

As an example, the European political elite seems to view its own citizenry as a bunch of potential fanatics on the verge of being incited into Islamophobic mobs. This cripples them from dealing with the threat of Islamism at home and abroad.

 

For reasons that are well known, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States despite being the most leftist chief executive in American history. One of those factors was that the electorate did not get complete information on this matter from a mass media largely intent on his victory. Read article.

 

Erik Rush, WND.com

 

For better or worse, I can understand why some are deriving an almost obscene degree of enjoyment in witnessing President Barack Obama's political currency spraying the walls like a severed carotid artery. While the results of two gubernatorial elections last fall (which seated Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey) appeared to represent a visit to the woodshed for Democrats, these were counted as an aberration by the party and the establishment press, and thus abandoned as a news item within scant days.

Of course, one could not have expected them to do otherwise; the press has evidenced itself as nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Obama administration, and the party is under the complete control of its hard-left leadership and Obama's "kitchen cabinet" – the foremost of which being billionaire pirate financier and former Nazi collaborator George Soros.

 

Now, Republican Scott Brown – a man most Americans had never even heard of two weeks ago – has captured a Senate seat held by Democrats for the last four decades. In deep-blue Massachusetts, of all places. On Jan. 17, when Obama jetted into that state in a bid to salvage Martha Coakley's campaign, the 3,000-plus capacity hall wasn't even full. Many who showed up were devotees who did so just to glimpse the president, like old hippies attending the farewell tour of an aging '60s rock icon – and weren't even Massachusetts residents. One attendee roundly heckled Obama. Very few press outlets disclosed these facts, but the evidence was there on the videotape and in a few correspondent accounts.

 

In the coming months, we will also see unconcealed obduracy on the part of the dedicated left in our government. Just this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "We will have health care … one way or another." Despite this certainty on the part of Obama, his inner circle, Pelosi, Reid and a few others that they will have their way by hook or by crook, some Democrats – even among the press – are beginning to realize something I've known for two years: Obama doesn't care if he eviscerates the Democratic Party in terms of moderate support and overall viability. Progressives (I refer to them as "communists") relied on subterfuge for 40 years and believed that they had finally gleaned enough power to operate openly – as indeed they began to do within days of Obama's inauguration. Read article.

 

John Bolton, Commentary Magazine.com

 

Where is Barack Obama’s foreign policy headed? In answering, one must accept a measure of humility. Predicting American policy makes more fools than sages. That goes double for foreign policy, as analysts must anticipate not only the actions of the United States but of foreign provocateurs as well.

 

In the case of Barack Obama, there is an additional caveat: the high-profile concerns that have monopolized his efforts abroad are seen by the president himself as little more than Bush-era loose ends, not the defining transactions of his own foreign policy. All new presidents encounter irritating constraints on their aspirations, but Obama is more irritated than most at having to endure any sense of continuity with his predecessor. His criticism of Bush continues unabated even as he fares no better in the same stubborn terrain.

 

Obama is not looking to build his foreign-policy legacy on top of disputes that predate his arrival. He is working to move past these, toward the day when he can implement his own foreign policy and national-security agendas. Accordingly, the best way to predict Obama’s foreign policy in the next three years lies not in examining how he deals with the accumulated baggage of Iraq, Afghanistan, Middle East peace, and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Important as those are, they constitute what Obama has had to confront. We should ask instead what he will attempt to establish once he has become less encumbered by the inherited issues. Here, the record shows three critical characteristics. Read article.

 

Vasko Kohlmayer, FrontPageMag.com

 

Unemployment holds at 10 percent,” read assorted headlines in response to December’s employment data provided by the Department of Labor.

 

The headlines represent a brave effort by the administration’s supporters to put a good spin on the bad news. Although not great, things are at least not getting worse is the implication. But things are getting worse. Last month the economy actually shed 85,000 jobs. The reason why the loss did not push up the jobless rate was because over the same period 600,000 discouraged people gave up looking for work. Because of this, they are no longer classified as unemployed. Had those workers been taken into the account, the December unemployment rate would have been 10.4 percent, the highest in almost thirty years.

 

When all those who have given up looking for employment are included, we get an overall unemployment level of 17.3 percent. This is the number that really matters, because it is a true gauge of the job market. It is also the measure that is given when people talk about the unemployment numbers during the Great Depression. Significantly, today’s picture is beginning to increasingly resemble that of the 1930s. And as luck would have it, all this is happening under the auspices of the man who rode into the Oval Office on promises of swift fixes. Read article.

 

 

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