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Jewish World Review Nov. 8, 2012/ 23 Mar-Cheshvan, 5773 Groundhog Day in America By Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Obama's win did not really reflect affirmation of his first term, given that the president made only halfhearted efforts to defend Obamacare, the stimulus, huge Keynesian deficits and his attempts to implement cap-and-trade. So if there is a second-term agenda, even Obama supporters don't quite know what it will be Unlike the hope-and-change campaign of 2008, Obama this time around ran on the theme that In textbook community-organizing fashion, Obama won the election by brilliantly cobbling together factions with shrill warnings of supposed enemies everywhere. Young women were threatened by sexist Neanderthal males. Minorities were oppressed by neo-Confederate tea partiers. Greens were in danger from greedy, smokestack polluters. Gays were bullied by homophobic evangelicals. Illegal aliens were demonized by xenophobic nativists. And the 47 percent were at the mercy of the grasping 1 percent. Almost any American could fall into the category of either an Obama-aligned victim or a Romney-aligned oppressor. How, then, can a re-elected President Obama put the fractured American Humpty Dumpty back together again after it has been shattered by such a nasty campaign? Certainly, it will no longer work for the president merely to wax eloquently on the need for more civility. Instead, his congressional opponents will expect more hardball Yet Obama is going to need bipartisan help to solve a number of menacing crises. Four years of Obama's If most Americans are willing to consider allowing paths to citizenship for law-obeying illegal aliens, then they should be equally adamant in using such discretion to deport those who are have broken the law or who become wards of the state. But does anyone believe such balance will really be the basis for compromise? The dread of Obamacare has already helped to spike insurance premiums. No one yet quite knows how the massive wave of new regulations will affect patients, doctors and hospitals. Nearly three years after the bill's passage, the public is still not happy with even the idea of it. Abroad, most believe that There soon must be truth-telling over the September terrorist killing of our ambassador and three Americans in But the facts of the worst terrorist attack on Americans since 9/11 remain stubborn things and won't go away. Al-Qaeda is not dismantled, but still killing Americans. Key administration officials -- Secretary of State Yet not everything ahead is bleak. Vast new gas and oil finds could soon make America energy-independent. The American economy is cyclical and may finally rebound on its own -- if Obama just leaves it alone and stops regulating and borrowing. Popular lore attests that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Let's hope that the same Democratic president, the same polarized
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. © 2012, TMS |
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