President Obama: A Republican Self-Induced Defeat

Over the past six months, Republicans tried to communicate that Barack Obama was too inexperienced to become President of the United States. Timing and Opportunity are two important ingredients in politics and Republicans gave Obama both advantages and he used them to win.

What do I mean? Simply put, the Republican Party allowed Barack Obama to elevate to the national stage prematurely, we are the cause of our own demise. In the last two election cycles, Republicans went from having majorities in both houses of Congress and the White House to being thrown out of power and having only 41 United States Senators. It is one of the Senate seats that spelled the beginning of the end of the current life cycle of the G.O.P.; the election of Barack Obama to the United States Senate in 2004.

In 2004, Barack Obama ran for the Senate seat vacated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald. According to Illinois news accounts, Fitzgerald and the State Republican leadership were at odds over Fitzgeralds’s role in the indictment of former Illinois Republican Governor George Ryan. After Fitzgerald’s withdrawal from the race, Jack Ryan (the Republican primary winner) dropped out of the race because of a scandal. Here is where the bus drives off of the cliff: instead of finding another Republican from Illinois to run against Obama, the Republican National Committee recruits perennial loser Dr. Alan Keyes from Maryland to move to Illinois to run against Obama. Of course, Keyes got trounced 70% to 27% in the general election.

In summary, Barack Obama gave a good speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. People inside the party called him a “rising star” which is understandable considering that he had been in the Illinois State Legislature for all of six years. President Obama owes his accelerated time schedule to the Illinois Republican Party and the RNC. If the State Party would have behaved like adults, incumbent Senator Peter Fitzgerald would have run for re-election. The RNC could have chosen ANYONE from Illinois who would have given Obama a closer election outcome instead of the largest margin of victory ever in a statewide race.

Barack Obama used the opportunities he was given wisely and ran an excellent campaign in 2008. He is now the 44th President of the United States; the ironic part of the story is that we Republicans are partially responsible for his win and our defeat.