“Perhaps you and I have lived with this miracle too long to
be properly appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and is never
more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by
inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each
generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have
known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” —
Ronald Reagan, January 1967
Why did Obama fail?
Or has Obama actually succeeded?
The debt soars to $16 trillion. Millions are out of work to the
tune of an 8.3% unemployment rate, with the CBO predicting it will
keep on climbing to 9% by 2013 — now only five short months away.
One could go on, yipping and yapping about everything from the
price of a gallon of gas (already headed north to four bucks a
gallon, it
spiked again Wednesday from a nickel to as much as 14 cents in
the wake of Hurricane Isaac) to the crony capitalism of
Solyndra.
So the question isn’t “has Obama failed”? No, the real question
is:
Why did Obama fail? And in the world of socialists and
progressives, isn’t this failure a success?
And the second question? When will the GOP begin linking Obama’s
results to Obama’s beliefs?
Let’s return to the 2008 Democratic primary debates when
then-Senator Obama was asked about raising taxes on capital gains.
ABC’s Charlie Gibson asked Obama:
Gibson: And in each instance, when the [capital
gains tax] rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the
government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was
increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at
all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this
country own stock and would be affected?
Obama: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I
would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of
fairness.
In spite of the fact — say again the hard fact — that lowering
capital gains taxes brought in more revenue, what was driving Obama
was “fairness.”
Let’s turn to one of GOP vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s
favorite economists — the Austrian Ludwig von
Mises:
Any advocate of socialistic measures is looked upon as the
friend of the Good, the Noble, and the Moral, as a disinterested
pioneer of necessary reforms, in short, as a man who unselfishly
serves his own people and all humanity, and above all as a zealous
and courageous seeker after truth. But let anyone measure Socialism
by the standards of scientific reasoning, and he at once becomes a
champion of the evil principle, a mercenary serving the egotistical
interests of a class, a menace to the welfare of the community, an
ignoramus outside the pale. For the most curious thing about this
way of thinking is that it regards the question of whether
Socialism or Capitalism will better serve the public welfare, as
settled in advance — to the effect, naturally, that Socialism is
considered good and Capitalism as evil — whereas in fact of course
only by a scientific inquiry could the matter be decided. The
results of economic investigations are met, not with arguments, but
with …”moral pathos” …and on which Socialists and (Statists) always
fall back, because they find no answer to the criticism to which
science subjects their doctrines.
In other words, a rigorous scientific examination of socialism
repeatedly shows it to be a failure.
A disastrous failure.
Which is what explains the debt, the high unemployment, the high
gas prices, Solyndra, the halting of production on the Chevy Volt
and all the rest of the last four years of disaster.
Here’s Larry Kudlow of CNBC, a former Reagan colleague, explaining the
basics of this latest try of socialist economics, this time as
tried by Mr. Obama.. “If it was going to work,” says economist
Kudlow of Obamanomics, “it would have worked.”
Clearly, it didn’t. Or did it?
Kudlow made his remarks at former Speaker Newt Gingrich’s “Newt
University” — a convention-long rolling seminar on the challenges
facing the country in the 2012 election.
Most impressively at Newt U., here is small
businessman David Park, a Korean-American, discussing his hard won
American success as a capitalist. At one point he
notes the famous photograph of the Korean peninsula at night
taken by a NASA satellite. South Korea — the capitalist half of
Korea, is ablaze in light. North Korea, the socialist half, is
completely black other than a dot of light that marks the capital
of Pyongyang. Assessing Obamanomics, Park says the obvious: America
is being led away from the light of capitalism towards the dark
side that is socialism, with all the dire and quite predictable
results socialism delivers.
Yet people fall for socialist economics over and over again
through the decades because it is always presented by its advocates
as a matter of “fairness.” Any question of whether it works in
practice are waved aside with questions of morality. Either that or
the outright fabrication that amidst all the obvious resulting
disaster — why yes, it really is working!!!!! As a matter of fact,
here is President Obama insisting just
that. “We tried our plan and it worked,” he says, illustrating
vividly in real time today precisely the socialist denial Mises was
talking about over 80 years go!
But is Obama really in denial? Or, from the stand point of a
leftist in bringing the American Experiment to ground, isn’t he
succeeding?
What Mr. Obama is doing right now — he has in fact spent his
entire career doing. Where are all those glowing media stories
about how much better off the South Side of Chicago was after the
famous community organizer departed? There are none, of course.
Because it simply didn’t happen.
Or did it? Isn’t creating a community of perpetual economic
misery throbbing with racism and thuggish union leaders part of the
eternal leftist plan?
In fact, now that we’re down to an Obama-Romney race it’s not
only accurate to say but embarrassingly accurate to note that Mitt
Romney has created more jobs with the creation of Staples — just
one Bain Capital project! — than Obama did with all of his
community activism.
Yet this game of socialist fairness and morality versus the
greedy, evil capitalists is played repeatedly. Leftist economics is
all about fairness — and the facts of the resulting disaster are
simply ignored. Or trumpeted as a triumph.
Why is this important now?
Because this election cannot be allowed to generate into a
personality contest between two men.
It is not enough to defeat Barack Obama with Mitt Romney.
Are there people out there who are angry with Obama? I’ll say.
Are all these GOP Establishment types right that there are
independent voters out there who are simply disappointed with Mr.
Obama? That they like him, but they are disappointed at his
results? Doubtless.
This Americans for Prosperity commercial for
Romney tries to capitalize on that feeling of disappointment.
Listen carefully here. These people are saying things like:
They voted for Obama the first time with “no reluctance.” Obama
had presented himself as “something different.” A woman says she
hoped Obama would bring “new jobs.” They had bought into the “hope
and change” mantra.
OK. Fine and dandy.
But none of this says to the watching television audience
why all these views of today’s voters were inevitable.
They were inevitable because based on Obama’s belief system the
results could not possibly be otherwise.
There is no connecting the dots between Obama’s fundamental
beliefs and the results Americans are now witnessing. Make that
suffering.
Fundamental beliefs now more than obvious as expressed in
Obama’s book
Dreams from My Father. Beliefs seen as repeatedly nurtured
in his associations with the socialist Weatherman radical and
bomber Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, the black
liberation theologian and longtime Obama pastor the Rev. Jeremiah
Wright, and his youthful mentor the Communist Frank Marshall
Davis.
If in fact running through the long litany of Obama’s
associations with far-leftist extremists makes GOP consultants
wince, at a minimum there needs to be a direct connection made
between Obama’s belief system and the results of his
presidency.
It is simply not enough to say, as Governor Christie did in his
keynote speech, that:
“It doesn’t matter how we got here.”
I confess to hear this from Governor Christie of all people was
nothing short of astonishing.
It most certainly does matter how we got here.
We got here because left-leaning housing policies on everything
from Fannie Mae to Freddie Mac to the Community Reinvestment Act
caused “the mess” that Mr. Obama inherited. Elected amid the
resulting disaster, the new president was instantly true to his own
leftist radical roots.
Everything that has poured forth from the Obama Administration
since Day One in terms of both policy and personnel— the stimulus,
Obamacare, the high unemployment rates, the cost of gas, the Van
Jones kerfuffle, the $16 trillion debt, the conduct of the Holder
Justice Department on illegal immigration and the refusal to
prosecute the New Black Panthers — every last bit of this and more
can be sourced directly to the core beliefs of socialism and
radical leftism.
Let’s let the GOP’s new vice presidential nominee, Congressman
Paul Ryan, explain why this matters. In his book Young Guns: A
New Generation of Conservative Leaders (co-written with
Congressmen Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy) Ryan recognizes the
need to connect the dots between Obama’s beliefs and Obama’s
results when he says this (bold emphasis Ryan’s) of what he calls
“The Tipping Point”:
In fact, Washington’s self-proclaimed Progressives see the
crisis in spending and debt coming just as clearly as we do. The
difference is, they’re not interested in applying the brakes. They
want to see America hurtle past the point of no
return. They welcome the level of government spending and the level
of government control in our lives that’s necessary for a
European-style welfare state. Their paternalistic philosophy calls
for a self-reinforcing expansion of government. This isn’t just a
narrow political ploy on their part, although an ever-growing
population dependent on government is good for the party of
government. In advocating government-controlled health care and a
national energy tax, Progressives are showing the zeal of their
ideological convictions. They truly believe the
best course for America is to abandon the idea for a model much
like the European Union.
Ryan has it exactly right.
And his presence on the Romney ticket is a hopeful sign that
this campaign has now been permanently lifted out of the shallow
waters of personality and professional background — and connected
permanently to a theme of core beliefs and results.
The Obama presidency is not a failure because Barack Obama is an
incompetent man. He is far from that.
The Obama presidency is a failure because his belief system
necessarily results in failure. A failure in creating jobs,
lowering unemployment, and keeping gas prices down, to name but
three.
But in the world view of the Left, just as Congressman Ryan has
said, Obama’s failure isn’t failure at all.
It’s success.
So it is now up to the Romney-Ryan ticket — and the GOP
campaign apparatus — to educate Americans on the game Obama and
company are playing.
While finally shattering — at least for a generation — the
political viability of the Leftist belief system that undergirds
it.
As that sign read on Ronald Reagan’s Oval Office desk:
“It CAN be done.”
And for America’s sake — it must be done.
