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David Harsanyi kicks off the day by telling the political class that they now have America’s attention.
…Tea Party types are interested in ideology not just economy. They will be disappointed at the first whiff of “bipartisanship” consensus on spending. They will be irate when Republicans fail to shut down unnecessary federal departments as promised.
(As others have pointed out, if the GOP doesn’t have the stomach to de-fund those nerds at NPR, how can we expect them to repeal Obamacare?)
Most elections aren’t as historically momentous as partisans would have us believe, but many can shift the trajectory of the national conversation for a long time.
Now that the Tea Party cleared the brush and lived to tell about it, the next round of candidates will be far less apprehensive in advocating free-market reforms. In fact, the next round of economically libertarian candidates — folks who had never thought of running against the establishment previously — are likely to be more polished, impressive and intellectually prepared to make their case.
…A new Rasmussen poll finds that 75 percent of likely voters believe a free market economy is better than an economy managed by the government. …
Jeff Jacoby thinks that expressing disdain for dense voters will not be a winning strategy for the Democrat party.
…The smug condescension in this — we’re losing because voters are panicky and confused — is matched only by its apparent cluelessness. Does Obama really believe that demeaning ordinary Americans is the way to improve his party’s fortunes? Or that his dwindling job approval is due to the public’s weak grip on “facts and science’’ and not, say, to his own divisive and doctrinaire performance as president?
…Obama is far from alone in looking down his nose at the great unwashed. Last month, Senator John Kerry explained that Democrats are facing such headwinds these days because voters are easily swayed dolts: “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on, so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth.’’
…Heading into next week’s elections, Americans remain a center-right nation, with solid majorities believing that the federal government is too intrusive and powerful, that it does not spend taxpayer’s money wisely or fairly, and that Americans would be better off having a smaller government with fewer services. Nearly halfway through the most left-wing, high-spending, grow-the-government presidential term most voters can remember, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that so many of them are rebelling. The coming Republican wave is an entirely rational response to two years of Democratic arrogance and overreach. As the president and his party are about to learn, treating voters as stupid, malevolent, or confused is not a strategy for victory.
Toby Harnden, in the Telegraph, UK, says the electorate will get the last laugh.
…The most chortling of all about the populist Tea Party and its anti-tax, anti-government uprising against the Republican establishment can be found on the shows of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the edgy liberal satirists on Comedy Central. …
…Three days before the elections, Stewart will hold a “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Washington on the same day as Colbert, who adopts the character of a Right-wing talk show host, leads a “March to Keep Fear Alive”. The thinly-disguised message: Republicans are crazies who trade on fear. …
…The problem for Obama and the Democrats is that belittling the Tea Party movement, which is taking hold of much of Middle America, merely fuels the popular sense that the party in power is out of touch. It also highlights the reluctance of Obama and the Democrats to discuss the Wall Street bail-out, economic stimulus and health care bills because they know they are not vote winners. …
In the WaPo, Marc A. Thiessen has an interesting article on what might have been, but for Democrat arrogance. And it reminds us that we will have to watch the GOP. Anybody remember Trent Lott, Tom Delay and Ted Stevens?
The decline of the Obama presidency can be traced to a meeting at the White House just three days after the inauguration, when the new president gathered congressional leaders of both parties to discuss his proposed economic stimulus. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor gave President Obama a list of modest proposals for the bill. Obama said he would consider the GOP ideas, but told the assembled Republicans that “elections have consequences” and “I won.” Backed by the largest congressional majorities in decades, the president was not terribly interested in giving ground to his vanquished adversaries.
He may rue that decision next Tuesday. Whether the midterm elections are a tidal wave that sweeps Democrats out of power on Capitol Hill or simply result in major losses for the president’s party, one thing is clear: The stimulus will play a major role in determining the outcome. The legislation has not kept the unemployment rate below 8 percent, as the White House promised — but it has been an electoral boon to Republicans, and an albatross around the necks of many Democrats who voted for it. It might have been a different story had Obama handled the stimulus differently. In January 2009, Republicans were running scared — still reeling from the thumping they received in the past two elections, and afraid to so much as criticize the new Democratic president with stratospheric approval ratings. In these circumstances, the president could have easily co-opted the GOP by making it a partner in crafting the stimulus. He could have told Republicans: Take half of the money and use it for tax relief, spending, or both. Indeed, Republicans introduced several alternative stimulus bills that cost half as much as Obama’s (“twice the jobs at half the cost” was the GOP mantra). Had Obama really wanted to be the first “post-partisan” president, he could have incorporated one of these alternatives into his final stimulus legislation. …
…Would Republicans have accepted hundreds of billions in new government spending in exchange for including pro-growth tax relief and other GOP proposals? The offer would likely have split the party, with a significant number supporting the bill. The grass-roots movement for fiscal discipline had not yet been born, and many of the same Republicans who voted in favor of the “Bridge to Nowhere” would have gladly compromised with the popular new Democratic president. …
Also in the WaPo, Michael Gerson says Obama wins the prize for most arrogant presidential quote. Actually, humans, and are ancestors, are hard-wired to think quite well when scared. It’s why we’ve survived for millions of years.
…”Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now,” he recently told a group of Democratic donors in Massachusetts, “and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.”
…Though there is plenty of competition, these are some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president.
…It is ironic that the great defender of “science” should be in the thrall of pseudoscience. Human beings under stress are not hard-wired for stupidity, which would be a distinct evolutionary disadvantage. The calculation of risk and a preference for proven practices are the conservative contributions to the survival of the species. Whatever neuroscience may explain about political behavior, it does not mean that the fears of massive debt and intrusive government are irrational. …
…One response to social stress doesn’t help at all: telling people their fears result from primitive irrationality. Obama may think that many of his fellow citizens can’t reason. But they can still vote.
John Steele Gordon adds his thoughts on Obama’s condescension.
…Equally interesting, I think, is a front-page article in today’s New York Times, with its simply astonishing opening sentence: “It took President Obama 18 months to invite the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, to the White House for a one-on-one chat.” Who was it who ran for president as a “post-partisan,” and who was going to bring a new way of doing things to Washington?
…The constitutional scholar in the White House might want to take a look at the Constitution’s preamble and refresh his memory as to who it was who ordained and established the government he heads. They’re going to be heard a week from tomorrow, and I don’t think President Obama is going to like what they have to say.
David Brooks dissects the liberal mindset.
…Over the past year, many Democrats have resolutely paid attention to those things that make them feel good, and they have carefully filtered out those negative things that make them feel sad.
For example, Democrats and their media enablers have paid lavish attention to Christine O’Donnell and Carl Paladino, even though these two Republican candidates have almost no chance of winning. That’s because it feels so delicious to feel superior to opponents you consider to be feeble-minded wackos.
On the other hand, Democrats and their enablers have paid no attention to Republicans like Rob Portman, Dan Coats, John Boozman and Roy Blunt, who are likely to actually get elected. It doesn’t feel good when your opponents are experienced people who simply have different points of view. …
Toby Harnden fills us in on the latest Obama gaffe.
To give credit where credit is due, President Barack Obama made something of a bipartisan gesture on Sunday night: he declined to endorse Frank Caprio, the Democratic candidate for governor of Rhode Island. This shock decision not to endorse the Democrat was effectively a thumbs up for Lincoln Chafee, the former Republican Senator.
…Now: Obama’s got the Democratic Governors’ Association on his back; he’s whipped up Rush Limbaugh into paroxysms of delight; he could well have lost his party a governor’s seat; and if he hasn’t lost his party the seat then he’s got a sworn enemy for the next four years in the form of Governor Caprio of Rhode Island (though after his outburst against the President in such a liberal state, I’d say that is a receding possibility).
People often think of Obama as being a masterful campaigner and political strategist. …
Ed Koch thinks that the American electorate is planning another round of housecleaning in D.C.
…Why would intelligent voters leave the Democratic Party that they endorsed so heavily two years ago in the 2008 presidential election? The reason is obvious – deep, deep disappointment in the record of President Obama. The President has wasted many opportunities in his term to date, and has lost by his own admission almost every battle for the hearts and minds of the electorate in pushing through Congress monumental legislation that he signed into law.
…I believe, the coming November tsunami will roll across America and give the Republicans, who are undeserving of the honor, control of both Houses. The American public is enraged and wants to punish those who have been in charge of the country. They know those who will replace incumbents may be as bad or worse, but they also believe they can’t do any greater damage. They are willing to put up with them until the next election to teach our elected representatives a monumental lesson — that public service is an honorable profession and must be performed competently and honestly. …
Jennifer Rubin has recommended reading.
Michael Gerson conducts a must-read interview with Charlie Cook. In addition to predictions of a massive GOP wave, there is this discussion about Obama and the Democratic agenda:
…Some, Cook says, “are told all their lives that they are the most brilliant people on the planet. They don’t get less bright, but hubris kicks in. [Obama] just assumed that he was going to be a success, as he had always been in life.”
According to Cook, this reflects a lack of experience. “Experience is not an end, it is a means to an end: judgment.” Cook said that a few years in the Senate “don’t give an understanding of institutions and their dynamics. If [Obama] had been in the Senate six or eight years, he might have accumulated the wisdom to match the intelligence.”
…But there was more going on than simply picking the wrong agenda items or refusing to temper his own ego. Obama’s ideological rigidity and policy preferences ran headlong into Americans’ skepticism about big government and their sense of moral outrage. The Tea Party is a movement grounded in the belief in limited government. But it was also born out of a sense that we have lost track of fundamental values — thrift, discipline, and humility, for starters — and as a result are seeing irresponsible spending, massive debt, and liberal statism.
In Pajamas Media, Ed Driscoll comments on more obnoxious Obama-isms.
…President Barack Obama attacked Republicans with gusto Monday as he plunged into a final week of midterm election campaigning, but his party’s prognosis remained darkened by the feeble economy and his itinerary was designed largely to minimize losses. …
…He said Republicans had driven the economy into a ditch and then stood by and criticized while Democrats pulled it out. Now that progress has been made, he said, “we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”
Rosa Parks could not be reached for comment.
The president does realize he’s elected to govern all of the voters, not just those who get their news from MSNBC, right? …