Editorial, Washington Times.com

 

President Obama's response to the catastrophic political failures of his freshman year in office is to fight harder for more of the same. Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett made the point explicitly on Sunday, asserting that the White House is "not hitting a reset button at all." That reflects the kind of political savvy that handed the safest Democratic Senate seat in America to a Republican.

 

Mr. Obama seems unaware that he is part of the problem. The president credited Scott Brown's historic Senate-race victory in Massachusetts last week to the same voter frustration that swept him into office in 2008. The glitch in that worldview is that Mr. Brown ran explicitly against the Obama agenda.

 

Mr. Obama's response to comparisons to 1994, when Democrats lost control of both the House and Senate, is that "the big difference here and in '94 was you've got me." Mr. Obama certainly is making a big difference, but none that should give comfort to his party.

 

Gallup polling data show he is the most polarizing first-year president since records have been kept, significantly more so than Bill Clinton, the previous record holder. Mr. Obama's approval rating dropped faster than Mr. Clinton's in his first year, and generic ballots for the 2010 race show Republicans in an as good or better position compared to 1994 or 2006, when Congress last changed hands. A Fox News poll from January 2006 found a 51 percent disapproval rate for the then-Republican Congress. The same poll this month shows disapproval with the Democratic Congress at 63 percent. Read article.

Dan Gainor, Townhall.com

 

It’s January and we’re watching reruns. The clueless main character and his band of misfits are struggling through another groovy episode. Barack Obama’s playing the cool lead with V.P. Joe Biden filling the role of the balding, curmudgeonly father figure. Throw in a tomboyish sidekick, a bunch of oddballs and it’s “That ’70s Show.”

 

It isn’t a sitcom, it’s real life. Obama might act like Ashton Kutcher’s Kelso with better clothes, but he’s really more like another ’70s character – Jimmy Carter. You remember Jimmy – the seemingly good-hearted, fish-out-of-water outsider from Plains, Ga. A public exhausted and disillusioned by Watergate narrowly gave him the presidency, and he had it made.

 

After squeaking by Ford, Carter came to Washington with the charm and homespun wisdom of a modern Mr. Smith. Like Obama, he was likeable. Only problem was, he was an awful president and leader. His failures cost Americans in their wallets and his party in Congress.

 

In 2010, Democrats once again had a prime seat to fill. Ted Kennedy, who the media often called the “Lion of the Senate,” died and Republican Scott Brown seized the Kennedy legacy and the job. In a few weeks, a hardcore blue state turned on the Obama agenda and voted to send a no vote on health care reform to Washington.

 

This wasn’t just a rejection of the Obamanation. This was a rejection of the media who have hammered Obama’s view on health care reform so often that they have helped turn even Massachusetts against it. For months the media misreported the number of Americans without health care. When Obama spoke on the issue, the media backed his every move. ABC even turned over its entire network to the president for a healthcare special. Read article.

 

Jeff Zeleny & Peter Baker, NY Times.com

 

President Obama is reconstituting the team that helped him win the White House to counter Republican challenges in the midterm elections and recalibrate after political setbacks that have narrowed his legislative ambitions.

 

Mr. Obama has asked his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee House, Senate and governor’s races to stave off a hemorrhage of seats in the fall. The president ordered a review of the Democratic political operation — from the White House to party committees — after last week’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, aides said.

 

In addition to Mr. Plouffe, who will primarily work from the Democratic National Committee in consultation with the White House, several top operatives from the Obama campaign will be dispatched across the country to advise major races as part of the president’s attempt to take greater control over the midterm elections, aides said. Read article.

 

Arnold Ahlert, JWR.com

 

Liberals' "vehicle" of choice is government—expansive, oppressive government which must be used as a club to batter the unenlightened into submissive compliance with "progressive" thinking.

 

Americans aren't buying it, especially when it becomes painfully apparent Democrats themselves are literally buying fellow Democrats to support the healthcare monstrosity. They're not buying it now that's it's become painfully clear that, for all the fiscal irresponsibility demonstrated by Republicans, Democrats are even worse.

 

Much worse.

 

And the public is sure as hell not buying it when it has become frighteningly clear that the nation remains a sieve when it comes to national security, due to liberals' never-ending love affair with political correctness.

 

As Scott Brown reminded us in his victory speech, only liberals would prefer spending taxpayer dollars on lawyers for terrorists than the weapons to defeat them. Only the lunatic left thinks that America is safer when Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has the "right to remain silent" instead of a date with a CIA interrogator who might have gotten him to spill the beans about additional plots against this country. These are the same lunatics willing to put the entire city of New York at risk for no other reason than demonstrating their "moral credentials" to a Muslim word that couldn't care less.

 

Predictably, for American leftists suffused with a delusional sense of superiority, there are calls for Barack Obama and Democrats to "double down" and ram their agenda through Congress, despite its obvious repudiation by one of the bluest states in the country.

 

This is one American who says, "go for it." Keep letting the country know—in no uncertain terms—that you don't give a damn about what most Americans think, or what they want. Keep it up until next November. Keep it up until every seat in the nation occupied by a liberal becomes as "safe" as "Ted Kennedy's seat" was on Tuesday. Keep it up until even your "thrill up a pants leg" media shills start running for their lives.

 

Keep it up until the national catharsis Americans were sold to believe happened in 2008 really happens in 2010.

 

Question of the day for clueless Democrats: has any political party ever pitched a shutout in a national election? Read article.

 

Ron Kessler, NewsMax.com

 

When Bill O’Reilly asked Sally Quinn how much President Obama would be hurt if Scott Brown wins the Senate election in Massachusetts, the Washington Post reporter had a ready answer.

 

“I don’t think he will be that hurt,” Quinn said on Fox News. “But I think that there are a number of factors here. It’s not as black and white as it seems. First of all, Scott Brown is a hunk. And I think that the fact that he posed semi-nude in a magazine gave him a huge advantage in terms of public recognition.”

 

In other words, in the view of Quinn, residents of a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-to-1 handed Brown a stunning victory not because they like his conservative views or are disgusted with Obama’s policies but because Brown is good looking and has name recognition.

 

In fact, Brown posed for a Cosmopolitan centerfold almost 30 years ago when he was a 22-year-old college student. While he is a state senator, most people in Massachusetts had never heard of him until he started his campaign for the U.S. Senate in September.

 

Only one reporter showed up to cover his announcement.

Early on, Brown was 30 percentage points behind Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley in the polls.

 

What Quinn — a former colleague of mine from the Washington Post — does not get, and what the White House and congressional Democrats don’t get, is that Americans are dismayed by the way Obama and the Democrats are spending the country into bankruptcy, trying to impose the government on the healthcare system, and giving terrorists rights and privileges as if they were American citizens. Brown made it clear that his vote in the Senate would vanquish the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority and torpedo the healthcare bill. Read article.

 

FireAndreaMitchell.com

 

Why did Scott Brown win in Massachusetts? Not because of ObamaCARE, not because of unemployment, not because of all the bribery and whoring on Capitol. Not even because not everyone in the state are far left loons, but maybe they are independent thinkers. No Scott Brown is winning because he’s a “hunk”. At least that’s what elitist snob and Washington Post religion writer Sally Quinn claimed on the O’Reilly Factor tonight. Oh, also it’s because he posed in Cosmo semi-nude in 1982. Aren’t liberals all for such things? Maybe Quinn and the rest of the liberals would prefer it was Barney Frank who posed semi-nude? (cringe) This is what the elitist snob Quinn had to say: “I think that there are a number of factors here. It’s not quite as black and white as it may seem. First of all Scott Brown is a hunk. And, I think that the fact that he posed semi-nude for a magazine gave him a huge advantage in public recognition.”

 

“I think that there are a number of factors here. It’s not quite as black and white as it may seem. First of all Scott Brown is a hunk. And, I think that the fact that he posed semi-nude for a magazine gave him a huge advantage in public recognition.” Read article.

 

Michael Goodwin, NY Post.com

 

We the people of the United States owe Scott Brown's sup porters a huge debt of gratitude. They didn't merely elect a senator. They ripped the façade off the Obama presidency.

 

Just as Dorothy and Toto exposed the ordinary man behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz," the voters in Massachusetts revealed that, in this White House, there is no there there.

 

It's all smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles, held together with glib talk, Chicago politics and an audacious sense of entitlement.

 

At the center is a young and talented celebrity whose worldview, we now know, is an incoherent jumble of poses and big-government instincts. His self-aggrandizing ambition exceeds his ability by so much that he is making a mess of everything he touches.

 

He never advances a practical idea. Every proposal overreaches and comes wrapped in ideology and a claim of moral superiority. He doesn't listen to anybody who doesn't agree with him.

 

After his first year on the job, America is sliding backwards, into grave danger at home and around the world. So much so that I now believe either of his rivals, Hillary Clinton or John McCain, would have made a better, more reliable and more trustworthy president. Read article.

 

 

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