The Obama juggernaut is fragmenting upon the jagged outcroppings
of American popular resistance. Yes, his health care catastrophe
might just pass Congress. Accounting gimmickry,
rhetorical appeals to Americans’ most decent moral impulses, and
$300 million bribes will do that for even the worst legislation.
But the signs are all pointing toward a monumental collapse in
public support for the president and his party.
Gallup polled Americans on health care reform the weekend the
House passed its health care bill. The country was evenly split,
with 41 percent saying the bill would make the health care
situation better and 40 percent saying worse. But it was the next
question that ought to have given Democrats pause. Asked how the
bill would affect them personally, 36 percent said it would make
their own health care situation worse. Only 26 percent said it
would make things better for them.
A Rasmussen Reports poll released Monday found that only 38
percent of Americans support the Democrats’ health care reform
plan. A solid majority of 56 percent opposed it.
Even worse for Obama, Gallup’s latest presidential job approval
rating showed the president falling below 50 percent for the
first time. Forty-nine percent approved of his performance;
forty-four percent disapproved. The graph shows his approval
numbers falling steadily since February, his disapproval numbers
rising steadily.
A CBS News poll conducted days after the passage of the House
health care bill found that Obama’s job approval among
independents had fallen 21 percentage points since February (a
third of that coming in the last month!) and is now at 45
percent. His disapproval rating among independents rose 28
percentage points, from 12 to 40.
The numbers were inevitable. A stridently liberal president,
House speaker, and Senate majority leader governing a
substantially conservative nation must tread lightly. Obama,
Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are stomping — with their fingers
plugging their ears to keep out the screams of the opposition
that comprises a majority of the country but a minority of
Congress.
Mistaking the country’s well-earned dissatisfaction with George
W. Bush and momentary infatuation with Obama for an ideological
realignment of historical proportions, Democrats in Washington
dashed giddily forward with an unprecedented spree of deficit
spending, economic meddling, entitlement expansion, and
controlling regulation. The people they expected to greet them
with cheers have recoiled in horror, or at least stopped in cold
amazement.
A populace proud of itself for electing its first black president
and still brimming with hope (yes, hope) and idealism at his
inauguration 11 months ago is now shocked at the pace and breadth
of his plans for “change.” Deficit spending at a higher rate than
FDR or LBJ, middle class tax hikes, an unconstitutional mandate
that all Americans buy health insurance. This is not what the
good-hearted, middle-of-the-road Americans who elected this
president thought they were voting for.
America’s government has changed. But America hasn’t. Obama (and
Pelosi and Reid) have not grasped that. They operate under the
delusion that the country is united behind their big-government
agenda. They believe this even after an October Gallup poll
reported that 40 percent of Americans self-identify as
conservatives, 36 percent moderates and only 20 percent liberals.
A left-wing governing majority that ignores the polls, the
protests, the tea parties, the taxpayer rallies, and the latest
election results is an unexpected gift to the right. This is no
Clinton administration. Governing from the middle and playing to
the polls are not behaviors we’ve seen this year. The Obama team
doesn’t seem to want to hold power indefinitely. It wants to
enact its agenda as quickly as possible, under the apparent
assumption (usually correct) that massive expansions of
government power are never reversed.
But this is an extremely high-risk strategy. It works if the
country is truly on your side. If not, the masses will revolt
before you’ve had a chance to enact your full agenda.
Conservatives have the country. Obama has the government. Given
Obama’s remarkably open and constant disdain for the people he
was elected to govern, one can make an educated guess what their
reaction will be the first time they have a chance to register
their feelings at the ballot box.
For giving them such an unexpectedly early opportunity to correct
the mistake they made last fall, the American people —
especially conservatives — ought to be thankful for this
president. He is an unapologetically aggressive liberal. For the
right, that’s a good thing. It means there will be no blurring of
the ideological lines in the next two elections.
Obama’s extreme liberalism allows the GOP to return to its core
principles without fear of losing the middle. Come 2010,
Americans will know (as long as Republicans don’t botch it) that
they are choosing between the party that wants to remake America
in the image of a European welfare state and the one that wants
to expand freedom. Thanks to his overreaching, Obama might really
have only two years to enact as much of his agenda as he can, not
four or eight. This Thanksgiving, that is something for which
conservatives ought to be deeply thankful.
