Besides being a speaker, I will be on the Tea Party Express bus doing a daily blog as well as other social networking activities such as Face Book, (search for “Grassroots in Michigan”) on Twitter as “apackof2″ And MIgrassroots look for the hashtags #mitcot and #TPEXMI hashtags in addition to our Grassroots in Michigan Ning site and our Grassroots in Michigan site
The latest charge level against Republicans/Conservatives by the Obama regime, is to label the opposition, “the party of no”
Well what this wrong with that?
Of course anyone who believes in the Constitution would naturally be saying “NO!”
NO to an unconstitutional mandate in a bill forcing every American to buy a service
NO to more unsustainable government orgy of spending
NO to the erosion of personal liberties, by a government take over of individual health care choices
NO to a government bill that mandates right the light bulb or appliance that a citizen must own
NO to the fraud of global warming pushed by the Obama regime, that could cost individual families up to $2,000 per year in increase utilizes
NO to Card Check” that robs a citizen of their right to vote privacy
No to appointed “czars”
No to the “taxation with out representation of the so- called stimulus bills
NO to a 1.7 Trillion dollar deficit and growing
NO to government take over of private industries (GM)
NO to every unconstitutional and draconian government control bill that the progressives have thrown out the past year
NO, NO a thousand times NO! a 1.7 trillion times NO!
If you child wanted to get drunk and then drive hot rod and drive would you say yes?
Of course not, because you know that it wouldn’t be in their best interest!
Saying No is in the best interests of your constituents and your country!
So Republicans, Conservatives… own the “NO!”
Rob the Obama regime of a silly whiny accusation! Throw it back in their face! NO is constitutional, NO is right, NO is in the best interest of my constituents, of America, of Americans
Ok are you ready! Say it out loud, “WE ARE THE PARTY OF “NO” AND PROUD!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!!
Michigan Patriots,
2010-the year we TAKE MICHIGAN BACK! Part 1
2009 was a momentous year because We the People went to war. Not just with those outside our country but from within. We are at war with those who have methodically worked to dismantle our Constitution, torn apart our representative Republic, and who wish to put another form of government in its place.
We have made progress in the “court of public opinion” with President Obama’s popularity plummeting at the polls as we have held tea parties, town halls, protested, called, faxed and e-mailed. The liberals/ socialist /fascists are on the run and we will continue to keep the pressure up…the winning of governors’ races in New Jersey, Virginia, and most recently, the election of Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s US Senate seat prove that people are fed up…We have the momentum NOW!
The 2010 elections are one of the most important in our life time.
For 2010 we must turn our attention to home, to our beloved Michigan. As Michiganders we have seen the results of the same liberal’s policies that the Obama regime is now trying to implement. After 8 years of liberal “leadership” Michigan is in shambles. Unemployment is at almost 15%, the Car Capitol of the World has seen a government take over of GM, jobs evaporate, foreclosures rise and families leave.
Michiganders, 2010 is the year that we must and will TAKE MICHIGAN BACK!
If we are honest with ourselves we must take responsibility for not being educated and active in the polices that have shaped our lives and hurt Michigan. We need to change that, for our state, our families, and our future. We must muster all soldiers in the Constitutional Conservative army.
But how do we accomplish that?
WE MUST:
ü Identify Constitutional Conservative Candidates with character, in all offices, local, county, state, school boards, and court system, who believe that holding office is a civic duty and that the government is the problem not the answer!
All Michigan House and Senate seats are up for re-election – we have a tremendous opportunity in 2010!
ü We at Grassroots in Michigan are working on a site that will be “one stop shopping” for information on candidates, races and issues in Michigan as well as tools to research candidates, voting records and ballot initiatives.
ü We also ask Michiganders to send us information about what is going on in your District to grassrootsinMI@gmail. You may have a sneak preview by going here: http://micc.grassrootsmichigan.com/
Campaigns need two things: People and Money
ü We must support these candidates with time and/or money. It doesn’t matter if you have 1 hour of 40 hours to give, $5 or $5,000. What matters is that you become engaged. Any campaign will plug you in, in an area that you are comfortable with. Literature drops, phone, banks, admin, door-to door etc are opportunities.
Part Two:
Take over your Party
Like it or not, we have a two party system, despite the talk of a 3rd party. Third parties historically have either disappeared or simply can not win. And to TAKE BACK MICHIGAN we must win.
So how do we, as Constitutional Conservatives take over a party?
You want to change the direction? Then find other people who think like you do and get organized “within” the party. Focus on the next set of Republican precinct organizational meetings and county conventions where local party officials are elected, as well as delegates to district and state conventions. Identify the dates and locations and share them with your friends
ü County (Republican) precinct organizational meetings can be found here : http://www.migop.org/index.php/site/contactCountyRep/a/
The little secret among party insiders (of either party) is that the number of people that participate in the actual organizational meetings where leadership is elected is incredibly low. Far lower even than the small percentage that participates in primary elections
Most precinct delegates require little to no campaigning and some are elected with just one vote! Deadline for filing to run in Michigan is no later than 4:00pm May, 11, 2010 at your county, city, or township clerk office.
ü Requirements for becoming a precinct delegate in your county can be found here: http://www.scribd.com/word/embed/25453902 (Printable and downloadable)
ü Application to become a precinct delegate can be found here: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Aff-ID_Precnt_139901_7.pdf
ü Identify those who currently have jobs within your county party and where they stand on our core conservative principles. Then either support them or replace them. It’s as simple as that.
.ü Know the rules. Get copies of state and local party rules. Study them and pay particular attention to the rules of procedure. Remember that the personnel that you are trying to replace knows them. You need to also. Get a copy Robert’s Rules of Order In Brief http://www.robertsrules.com/ STUDY THEM so you and your conservative coalition won’t be out maneuvered!
ü Continue to go to your county party meetings, form a coalition with other constitutional conservatives there, vote, go to the state convention, get on the executive committee, run for vice county chair, and then county chair, then you will be helping to pick the candidates on your party ticket!
When you change who is driving, you’ll change where the vehicle is headed. And in the process you’ll build critical infrastructure for the party, which will make it more likely to be successful for the issues you care about – and help build the conservative movement at the same time!
Elections have consequences, as they say, and that applies not just to public office but also to party office. If you’re really committed to conservative principles, then don’t make it any easier for liberals to win – GET INVOLVED!
In a nutshell precinct delegates:
What is a Precinct Delegate?
The role of Precinct Delegate is extremely important and is as “grassroots” as you can get. Precinct Delegates are elected by that precinct’s voters to serve as a liaison between voters and the Democrat or Republican Party in your neighborhood.
What is a Precinct?
The precinct is the smallest political unit in the country and it is where elections are won or lost. All voters in a precinct vote at one location. It is your neighborhood, where you know the people and the issues most important to them.
What do Precinct Delegates do?
As a grassroots leader for your party in your precinct, a Precinct Delegate might:
1. Help people get registered to vote; take information on issues and candidates to voters
2. Identify and recruit others interested in your party
3. Help turn out your party’s vote in your neighborhood on Election Day; or inform party leaders about the issues that concern voters.
Complete printable and downloadable copy here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/25453283/What-is-a-Precinct-Delegate
Michiganders, 2010 is the year that we must and will TAKE MICHIGAN BACK!
In 1863 the Civil War was in its second year.
In January of that year President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation goes into effect.
However September of 1863 saw,
The bloodiest two days in American history that cost the Federals 1,657 dead, 9,756 wounded, and 4,757 missing for a total of 16,170 casualties out of 58,000 troops. The Confederate losses were 2,312 dead, 14,674 wounded and 1,468 for a total of 18,545 out of 66,000 troops.
However in the midst of that Civil War, a war where every casualty was American, President Lincoln issued a proclamation of national day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.…and…fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
Today we are engaged in a war. Although no shots have been fired, or blood shed, our country has been taken over in a bloodless coup by a Fascists regime that seeks to destroy our Republic with a Unconstitutional ideology.
This Thanksgiving let us give thanks for the bounty of America and let us fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand in repentance for our sins and in preserving our Constitution, our Republic and our very way of life as a free people of a Representative Republic that places our trust in God “In God We Trust”
Proclamation Establishing Thanksgiving Day
October 3, 1863
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.
And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth.
A. Lincoln
From RedState
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and four others accused in the attacks will be put on criminal trial in New York, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce later Friday.
There have been reports in the past month about another potential terrorist attack disrupted in New York City. Bringing these high profile terrorist leaders to New York will just put a target on New York again.
Even worse, the White House is going to subject these terrorists to criminal trials in civilian courts. They will get all the due process rights of citizens in court and potentially will be able to get access to material evidence in a civilian court that could reveal intelligence we’d prefer them not to have.
In a splitting the baby moment, though,
in the announcement Friday will be plans to hold a military tribunal for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged to have planned the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.
So, the man who blew up New York gets a civilian trial and the guy who blew up the Cole gets a military tribunal.???
This is more than outrageous it is a “clear and present danger” to America’s security! Not only in bringing this terrorists to the city where he was the master mind behind the slaughter of 3,000 innocent men and woman but also as the article states, intelligence information will be brought out under discovery. Not to mention that this trial could last for years at what costs to taxpayers?
This is man is not a US citizen, he is a terrorist and self declared enemy of the United States. As an enemy combatant he should be tried at a military tribunal.
And of course the question must be asked, Why the man who blew up New York gets a civilian trial and the guy who blew up the Cole gets a military tribunal.??? What was the criteria used to make that decision??
Are you counter-protesting more and enjoying it less?
Feel your counter-protesting has become less effective?
Perhaps it time to look outside the box for new inovative and effective way to maxize your next counter-protest of your local ObamaCare kool aid drinkers, MoveOn.org, ACORN, MEA etc and so on!
The new training video below shows you how! (enjoy:)
Courtesy of Mackinac Center for Public Policy
SIDEBAR: Michigan House-Senate Conference Committee, which is looking for ways to erase a $2.8 billion budget deficit for fiscal 2010, is considering imposing a 3 percent Gross provider tax on more than 15,000 physicians who practice in the state.
The possible physician tax, known as a Quality Assurance Assessment Program fee, would be used to increase federal matching share dollars for the state’s Medicaid program. For every $1 the state raises, the federal government matches with another $1.72.
If this tax is implemented the affect will be many doctors leaving the state and result in a reduced quality of care for Michigan citizens. How many have we lost in recent years? Something close to 500,000 of our best educated and most skilled people. “Taxed to Death” takes on an ominous meaning here..
This has already passed the House (HB 5386) and will be headed for the Senate
as SB 0854
PLEASE CALL your Senator and tell them not to TAX our doctors!
FIND YOUR MICHIGAN SENATOR HERE:
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” - Ben Franklin
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take everything you have.” - Thomas Jefferson
“Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” - Thomas Jefferson
From Jeff Schreiber, excellent blog America’s right
Jeff is a reformed liberal democrat with nearly a decade on the wagon, Jeff established America’s Right in January 2008 in hopes to advance the conservative message and articulate the merits of conservatism to any who would listen.
The first vote came on Tuesday, when the Senate voted 83-7 to suspend funding to ACORN in Department of Housing and Urban Development and Department of Transportation appropriations bill. Seven senators voted in favor of continuing to fund ACORN, an organization already being investigated in more than a dozen states for voter fraud, and an organization which obviously should be investigated for tax fraud and much, much more. Those seven senators?
* Dick Durbin (D-IL)
* Roland Burris (D-IL)
* Robert Casey (D-PA)
* Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
* Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
* Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
* Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
One of them is mine. How positively lovely. Another is named “Whitehouse.” How appropriate.
The second vote came yesterday in the House, which by a vote of 345-75 passed an amendment to the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act that would deny all federal funds to ACORN. The amendment, if I’m correct, was brought forth by House Minority Leader John Boehner. (Actually, it was Daniel Issa.) Here are the 75 who voted against it:
* Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
* Xavier Becerra (D-CA)
* Bob Filner (D-CA)
* Mike Honda (D-CA)
* Barbara Lee (D-CA)
* Roybal-Allard (D-CA)
* Linda Sanchez (D-CA)
* Brad Sherman (D-CA)
* Pete Stark (D-CA)
* Maxine Waters (D-CA)
* Diane Watson (D-CA)
* Henry Waxman (D-CA)
* Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
* Diana DeGette (D-CO)
* Jared Polis (D-CO)
* Corrine Brown (D-FL)
* Kathy Anne Castor (D-FL)
* Robert Wexler (D-FL)
* John Lewis (D-GA)
* David Scott (D-GA)
* Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
* Danny Davis (D-IL)
* Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
* Bobby Rush (D-IL)
* Janice Schakowsky (D-IL)
* Andre Carson (D-IN)
* Elijah Cummings (D-MD)
* Donna Edwards (D-MD)
* Michael Capuano (D-MA)
* Bill Delahunt (D-MA)
* Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
* Ed Markey (D-MA)
* Jim McGovern (D-MA)
* Richard Neal (D-MA)
* John Olver (D-MA)
* Niki Tsongas (D-MA)
* Carolyn Kilpatrick (D-MI)
* Ralph Ellison (D-MN)
* Betty McCollum (D-MN)
* Bennie Thompson (D-MS)
* Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO)
* Rush Holt (D-NJ)
* Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ)
* Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ)
* Donald Payne (D-NJ)
* Albio Sires (D-NJ)
* Joseph Crowley (D-NY)
* Eliot Engel (D-NY)
* Maurice Hinchey (D-NY)
* Gregory Meeks (D-NY)
* Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
* Charlie Rangel (D-NY)
* Jose Serrano (D-NY)
* Louise Slaughter (D-NY)
* Edolphus Towns (D-NY)
* Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)
* G.K. Butterfield, Jr. (D-NC)
* David Price (D-NC)
* Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
* Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
* Bob Brady (D-PA)
* Mike Doyle (D-PA)
* Chaka Fattah (D-PA)
* Jim Clyburn (D-SC)
* Al Green (D-TX)
* Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)
* E.B. Johnson (D-TX)
* Jim Moran (D-VA)
* Bobby Scott (D-VA)
* Rick Larsen (D-WA)
* Jim McDermott (D-WA)
* Alan Mollohan (D-WV)
* Nick Rahall (D-WV)
* Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
* Gwen Moore (D-WI)
A few things to point out: First, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did not vote by tradition; Second, take a gander at the first letter after these 75 names, and consider which party tolerates–if not endorses–corruption and lawlessness in the name of social justice; Third, keep in mind that the ACORN-related measure was an amendment on a much bigger bill, so many of these people could be otherwise committed to a vote on the Student Loan legislation.
Of course, that shouldn’t be too much consolation. Unfortunately, the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 also essentially nationalized the student loan industry — but that’s a matter for another time and place.
I have been meaning to post this for several weeks however other News intervened. I am posting in in its entirely, which I normally do not do however I believe its an important piece
Obama and Redistributive Change
by Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Forget the recession and the “uninsured.” Obama has bigger fish to fry
The first seven months of the Obama administration seemingly make no sense. Why squander public approval by running up astronomical deficits in a time of pre-existing staggering national debt?
Why polarize opponents after promising bipartisan transcendence?
Why create vast new programs when the efficacy of big government is already seen as dubious?
But that is exactly the wrong way to look at these first seven months of Obamist policy-making.
Take increased federal spending and the growing government absorption of GDP. Given the resiliency of the U.S. economy, it would have been easy to ride out the recession. In that case we would still have had to deal with a burgeoning and unsustainable annual federal deficit that would have approached $1 trillion.
Instead, Obama may nearly double that amount of annual indebtedness with more federal stimuli and bailouts, newly envisioned cap-and-trade legislation, and a variety of fresh entitlements. Was that fiscally irresponsible? Yes, of course.
But I think the key was not so much the spending excess or new entitlements. The point instead was the consequence of the resulting deficits, which will require radically new taxation for generations. If on April 15 the federal and state governments, local entities, the Social Security system, and the new health-care programs can claim 70 percent of the income of the top 5 percent of taxpayers, then that is considered a public good — every bit as valuable as funding new programs, and one worth risking insolvency.
Individual compensation is now seen as arbitrary and, by extension, inherently unfair. A high income is now rationalized as having less to do with market-driven needs, acquired skills, a higher level of education, innate intelligence, inheritance, hard work, or accepting risk. Rather income is seen more as luck-driven, cruelly capricious, unfair — even immoral, in that some are rewarded arbitrarily on the basis of race, class, and gender advantages, others for their overweening greed and ambition, and still more for their quasi-criminality.
“Patriotic” federal healers must then step in to “spread the wealth.” Through redistributive tax rates, they can “treat” the illness that the private sector has caused. After all, there is no intrinsic reason why an auto fabricator makes $60 in hourly wages and benefits, while a young investment banker finagles $500.
Or, in the president’s own language, the government must equalize the circumstances of the “waitress” with those of the “lucky.” It is thus a fitting and proper role of the new federal government to rectify imbalances of compensation — at least for those outside the anointed Guardian class. In a 2001 interview Obama in fact outlined the desirable political circumstances that would lead government to enforce equality of results when he elaborated on what he called an “actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”
Still, why would intelligent politicians try to ram through, in mere weeks, a thousand pages of health-care gibberish — its details outsourced to far-left elements in the Congress (and their staffers) — that few in the cabinet had ever read or even knew much about?
Once again, I don’t think health care per se was ever really the issue. When pressed, no one in the administration seemed to know whether illegal aliens were covered. Few cared why young people do not divert some of their entertainment expenditures to a modest investment in private catastrophic coverage.
Warnings that Canadians already have their health care rationed, wait in long lines, and are denied timely and critical procedures also did not seem to matter. And no attention was paid to statistics suggesting that, if we exclude homicides and auto accidents, Americans live as long on average as anyone in the industrial world, and have better chances of surviving longer with heart disease and cancer. That the average American did not wish to radically alter his existing plan, and that he understood that the uninsured really did have access to health care, albeit in a wasteful manner at the emergency room, was likewise of no concern.
The issue again was larger, and involved a vast reinterpretation of how America receives health care. Whether more or fewer Americans would get better or worse access and cheaper or more expensive care, or whether the government can or cannot afford such new entitlements, oddly seemed largely secondary to the crux of the debate.
Instead, the notion that the state will assume control, in Canada-like fashion, and level the health-care playing field was the real concern. “They” (the few) will now have the same care as “we” (the many). Whether the result is worse or better for everyone involved is extraneous, since sameness is the overarching principle.
We can discern this same mandated egalitarianism beneath many of the administration’s recent policy initiatives. Obama is not a pragmatist, as he insisted, nor even a liberal, as charged.
Rather, he is a statist. The president believes that a select group of affluent, highly educated technocrats — cosmopolitan, noble-minded, and properly progressive — supported by a phalanx of whiz-kids fresh out of blue-chip universities with little or no experience in the marketplace, can direct our lives far better than we can ourselves. By “better” I do not mean in a fashion that, measured by disinterested criteria, makes us necessarily wealthier, happier, more productive, or freer.
Instead, “better” means “fairer,” or more “equal.” We may “make” different amounts of money, but we will end up with more or less similar net incomes. We may know friendly doctors, be aware of the latest procedures, and have the capital to buy blue-chip health insurance, but no matter. Now we will all alike queue up with our government-issued insurance cards to wait our turn at the ubiquitous corner clinic.
None of this equality-of-results thinking is new.
When radical leaders over the last 2,500 years have sought to enforce equality of results, their prescriptions were usually predictable: redistribution of property; cancellation of debts; incentives to bring out the vote and increase political participation among the poor; stigmatizing of the wealthy, whether through the extreme measure of ostracism or the more mundane forced liturgies; use of the court system to even the playing field by targeting the more prominent citizens; radical growth in government and government employment; the use of state employees as defenders of the egalitarian faith; bread-and-circus entitlements; inflation of the currency and greater national debt to lessen the power of accumulated capital; and radical sloganeering about reactionary enemies of the new state.
The modern versions of much of the above already seem to be guiding the Obama administration — evident each time we hear of another proposal to make it easier to renounce personal debt; federal action to curtail property or water rights; efforts to make voter registration and vote casting easier; radically higher taxes on the top 5 percent; takeover of private business; expansion of the federal government and an increase in government employees; or massive inflationary borrowing. The current class-warfare “them/us” rhetoric was predictable.
Usually such ideologies do not take hold in America, given its tradition of liberty, frontier self-reliance, and emphasis on personal freedom rather than mandated fraternity and egalitarianism. At times, however, the stars line up, when a national catastrophe, like war or depression, coincides with the appearance of an unusually gifted, highly polished, and eloquent populist. But the anointed one must be savvy enough to run first as a centrist in order later to govern as a statist.
Given the September 2008 financial meltdown, the unhappiness over the war, the ongoing recession, and Barack Obama’s postracial claims and singular hope-and-change rhetoric, we found ourselves in just such a situation. For one of the rare times in American history, statism could take hold, and the country could be pushed far to the left.
That goal is the touchstone that explains the seemingly inexplicable — and explains also why, when Obama is losing independents, conservative Democrats, and moderate Republicans, his anxious base nevertheless keeps pushing him to become even more partisan, more left-wing, angrier, and more in a hurry to rush things through. They understand the unpopularity of the agenda and the brief shelf life of the president’s charm. One term may be enough to establish lasting institutional change.
Obama and his supporters at times are quite candid about such a radical spread-the-wealth agenda, voiced best by Rahm Emanuel — “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid” — or more casually by Obama himself — “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
So we move at breakneck speed in order not to miss this rare opportunity when the radical leadership of the Congress and the White House for a brief moment clinch the reins of power. By the time a shell-shocked public wakes up and realizes that the prescribed chemotherapy is far worse than the existing illness, it should be too late to revive the old-style American patient.
— NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institutio
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