Obama Meltdown

The author offers a remedy, but I say, let Obama melt down, it'll teach liberals a lesson: don't overreach in your overzealous attempt to hurt capitalism, the only tenant of a free and wealthy America, at all levels of individual worth.

1) Health Care. Health-care take overs and socialized medicine have terrified not just the right and conservatives, but the elderly of all persuasions who fear their shaky Medicare funds will be diverted to Obama's new plans. In short, they believe their care will be rationed and given to all sorts of new recipients. And they fear age will be a basis for meriting treatment.

It was an insane political move to demonize these town-hallers, when streaming video showed the participants scared and angry, but not violent, trying to get answers from smug politicos who either cell phoned away, ridiculed questioners in the manner of Barney Frank, or mocked their interrogators. ...

2)   The Spell is Broken. Cap-and-trade, the mega-deficits, the apology tours, and the sleaze of some appointments and congressional grandees (cf. Rangel, Dodd, Murtha, etc.) were stimulants, but not in themselves enough to awaken the somnolent American people from their collective trance. Yet health care was like a shot of adrenaline that jolted the patient out of his slumber. Suddenly hope and change no longer worked like the swinging watch and "you're getting sleepy" lingo. Voters are feeling they've been "had" and were mesmerized into being used for an extremist agenda. ...

3)   The Counter-attack is not working. The Obama shotgun has blasted all sorts of magnum loads—town-hall and tea-party critics were un-American, Nazis, tools of the insurance industry, dupes, and Astro-turfers. Now the religious argument is thrown out at the 11^th hour: those who doubt neo-socialist care are somehow un-Christian and uncaring. ...

The Therapy

1)   Cool the "this is our moment", "hope and change" rhetoric. Obama reminds me of what Wellington supposedly said of Napoleon's Old Guard at Waterloo "They came on in the same old way, and we sent them back in the same old way." Instead, he should quietly follow the 1995 triangulation model of Bill Clinton/Dick Morris.

Obama should concentrate on debt, debt, and more debt. He could freeze federal spending at 2% per annum, and get into the black in two-three years, given his income tax hikes. He could pacify the Left with, "I'd love to pursue our socialist agenda, but we are going broke and cannot right now."

Instead of cap-and-trade, he could allot a few feminist, green and gay ambassadorships that would not impact the federal treasury. Given the sudden silence on Iraq, the Left has demonstrated that their furor was always about power lost and hatred for George Bush in the White House, never much about principles or convictions. That Obama is in the White House is more important to most former critics of Bush than anything he does or says.

2)   Return to the "no more blue/red state" bipartisan tropes. Consider Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barney Frank as the real challenges, since the animosity that they engender can do far more damage to Barack Obama than Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and all of the Fox News cast put together. Voters are more comfortable with Blue Dogs than Barbara Boxer. Soon the tea-party anger is going to spill over and result in Boxer, Reid, etc. having reelection nightmares.

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