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Jewish World Review Sept. 15, 2011 16 Elul 5771 Obama Becomes the Fall Guy By Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Suddenly, liberal op-ed writers are trashing -- even lampooning -- Left-wing think tanks, environmentalists and academics vent their anger against Obama for supposedly being too soft on Republicans, and too ready to compromise with right-wingers. But what really caused the left-wing falling-out, less than three years after the hope-and-change crush on For now, polls. Obama's popularity has plummeted to little more than 40 percent approval. Suddenly, Democrats worry that the public anger could be contagious. It might infect them as well -- in the way a sinking Yet the left cannot fairly blame Obama. After all, he rammed through on a strictly partisan vote the century-old liberal dream of a federal takeover of health care -- something that The Obama administration even tried to shut down a brand-new The Obama revolution under the radar was even more insidious. Open-borders activists were promised that the government would not bother illegal aliens unless they were wanted for felonies. Never before has From Far from being namby-pamby, Obama has gone after opponents like no president since Critics may lampoon Obama's use of a teleprompter, but he still uses it to good effect in his near-daily speeches. Obama is a far better megaphone for left-wing policies than was the lackluster So the left cannot really complain either that Obama betrayed the cause or proved particularly inept in advancing it. Instead, what Obama's supporters are mad about is that the public is boiling over chronic 9 percent unemployment, a comatose housing market, escalating food and fuel prices, near nonexistent economic growth, a gyrating stock market, record deficits, A mostly moderate-to-conservative public has concluded that it does not like the new liberal agenda. After three years, it believes that the big government/big borrowing medicine made the inherited illness far worse. Voters may or may not like Obama, but they surely do not like what he is still trying to do. In response, the left needs a sacrificial lamb. So it has nonsensically turned with a fury on Obama as if he were culpable for getting through the left's own agenda. If Democrats do not blame the public's anger on their once-beloved messenger, then they are left only with their message itself. And that is something they simply cannot accept.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. Comment by clicking here. © 2011, TMS |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||
