Barack Obama: A Legacy in the Making

Four or five years from now, when Barack Obama is showing Jimmy Carter how to saw a two-by-four for Habitat for Humanity, historians will be lying awake nights trying to figure out how to rewrite his legacy.

They will labor for long, intensive days under soft-white luminaires at Georgetown and Harvard and Columbia and Yale, wrestling with his non-materialized promises to bring a non-partisan, transparent presidency to Washington, close down Guantanamo, fix the broken economy and create jobs.  They will wonder aloud how they can blame Bush for Obama’s failed strategy in Afghanistan and how to minimize his indecisiveness in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

They will work overtime trying to explain why African Americans, so supportive in his first bid for the White House, did not turn out to reelect him. There will be a paragraph on his failed attempt to bring parity for illegals in Arizona with a non-existent immigration policy.

They will devote a page to his Nobel Peace Prize, explaining how, without even a year in office, he accomplished so much that the Nobel committee simply had no other choice.

Some attention will be given to an out of control media, who refused to give the President credit for his accomplishments; hard-hitting interviews by Brian Williams and Larry King and Harry Smith will be cited.   Fox News will be ignored, except when mentioning the biases of Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and the hiring of Sarah Palin to attack Obama’s every move.

In the end, they will, one by one, gloss over his failures as Chief Executive, and cover his astounding rise to power ad nauseam, finally concluding that a racially tinged group of rabble-rousers turned public opinion against him.  No doubt they will find white space to interlock his photograph alongside Dr. Martin Luther King’s.

He will be honored at the Kennedy Center and given awards by leftist front groups, and when they run out of awards, they will create more.  MTV or BET will air an annual Barack Obama Awards program and we’ll all be treated to Paul McCartney’s sappy renditions of former Beatles songs.

By sometime around mid 2020, their work will be accomplished.  Barack Obama will shine as the First African American President.  The embarrassments of his failed presidency will be buried deep beneath his post-presidential accomplishments and he will easily move into the elder-statesman status every president except Jimmy Carter has enjoyed.  Or Not.

This will all be going on, you understand, while the next Chief Executive is burning the midnight oil trying to work the country out of the mess Obama has made.  And while George W. Bush and Barack tour the country, having put politics aside, for their joint cause célèbre.

 

How Republicans Win in 2010 (Part 2)

It just could be that we are wrong about the 2010 midterms and the Republicans will not have to move a muscle to sweep into the House with a 50-seat majority.

A recent generic poll suggests that could be the case. That, of course, is emotional polling data. The same kinds of polls will tell you that most people still believe that George W. Bush is responsible for the economic downturn, when the facts belie it. In 2005, John McCain, with the support of the Bush White House, drafted a bill that would have reined in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and almost certainly staved off the disastrous housing and financial crash of 2007. Bush made mistakes but the market crash wasn’t one of them.

No, we still believe we are right. If the Republicans want a win that will destroy Democrat chances of ever trying this Soviet-style takeover again they will have to work for it. Here are a few steps we believe they must take.

Avoid Dede Scozzafava Syndrome:

Here is where the RNC runs into real trouble with the “Tea Party.” The RNC still blames Sarah Palin for its first loss in over 100 years in New York’s 23rd District. Nonsense. Newt Gingrich was on the wrong side in that contest and, if the RNC had exerted pressure on the NYGOP to nominate even a moderate conservative, Palin wouldn’t have involved herself in the first place. Scozzafava (Wow! We ain’t seen that many vowels since the FBI raided the Mafia Appalachian Summit in 1958.) is a complete liberal.

It should go without saying that the GOP can’t throw a John McCain under the bus after 30 years, but there are dozens of races where they can back conservatives over moderate candidates, and they must if they are to have a lasting win.

Sautéing Democrats in Their Own Oil

We have said for some weeks now that the GOP cannot win on ObamaCare and now the polls bare it out. Sometimes emotional polls are a good thing. Here is what they will win on:

1) Job, jobs, and more jobs. Jobs are the first and foremost issue to run on in 2010. Obama has done absolutely zip on job creation unless you count the fruit loops who are running around with broken census computers.

2) Health Care. Yes, pound it hard but it is secondary to … did we say, JOBS? Oh, I forgot, Indian vegetarian restaurants are hiring.

3) The Economy. This is where it gets sticky. The economy is due for an upturn regardless of what Obama does or doesn’t do. The US economy is resilient and it is cyclical. The question to put to voters is What kind of economy do you want? A European Secular-Socialist economy, or a Free Market?

4) Take on Obama the Liar. This is easy: Barack Obama’s nature is to lie, not because he is an evil man, but because his political worldview requires it. He is un-American regardless of what Bill O’Reilly tells you. He is not a patriot and he has very little history in this country other than in academia and leftist social causes. He has and must continue to lie about his ideas.

Run sharp political ads revealing Democrat lies: Obama-Pelosi-Reid lied about taxes; they will now go for the VAT, increased income taxes, capital gains, you name it, the Democrat agenda is vulnerable.

Lastly, none of this will work unless the RNC gets out an unvarnished unified message. As the old axiom goes: “Tell them what you are going to say, say it, and then tell them what you said.” Then do it.

The GOP has drafted a new Contract With America. Now they must make sure it gets out there and keeps getting out until people are hearing it. As far as we have been able to determine it is not even posted on their website.

This is not a good start, Mikey.