Mark Tapscott at DCExaminer declares that Obama is in trouble. The meat of what he is saying:
* Since the first of the year, Rush Limbaugh’s audience has exploded , according to Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post, even as his daily assaults on Obama have intensified. The conservative Talk Radio maestro has become quite possibly the most listened-to radio personality in America since before Paul Harvey (God rest his soul).
Demand for his air time hs suddenly become so intense, Limbaugh told The Examiner’s Byron York earlier today, that his network sold 80 percent as much advertising in January 2009 as it did in all of 2008, and expects to sell-out the year by the end of March. That was before Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel launched an explicit counter-attack against Limbaugh that seems only to be making him bigger.
* Glenn Beck’s eminently forgettable presence on CNN has been transformed, according to The Los Angeles Times, by his move to Fox News where his main theme has been variations on this question – Wake Up! Wake UP! What in Heaven’s name does Barack Obama think he is doing to America? Beck has a tough time slot from which to win big ratings because he’s in the middle of evening drive-time. Even so, in a very short period of time at Fox, his audience has grown to the point that it is now exceeded only by those of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.
* Obama remains personally popular with the public, but worries and even outright opposition to some of his cornerstone proposals are growing. Democrats in Congress are even beginning to express in public print their worries that Obama has reached too far with the $787 billion economic stimulus package, the $410 billion omnibus spending bill and the $3.6 trillion budget proposal (and the trillions more senior aides whisper are coming in further bailouts, loan guarantees, “tax cuts” that are really just grants, and other spending accountrements of Leviathan Unleashed.)
* Paralleling these developments, a potentially devastatng conservative case against Obama is coming together rapidly. Two influential columns this week tell the tale: On Thursday, Daniel Henninger offers this crucial observation in a WSJ piece otherwise devoted to asking why Republicans aren’t more eagerly and quickly taking advantage of the fact the Obama Democrats have all but declared war on the 75 percent of the U.S. economy that is private and therefore productive of the nation’s wealth:
“Beyond the stock market, there is a reason why, despite much goodwill toward his presidency, the Obama response to the faltering economy has left many feeling undone. There isn’t much in his plan to stir the national soul. It’s about ‘sacrifice’ now so that we can live for a future of small electric cars and windmills. This may move the Democratic Party’s faith communities, but it cannot revive a great nation. If the Democrats want to embrace market failure as a basis for their ideology, let them have it. As politics, it’s a downer.”
And:
Now, though, the mask is off and the disconnect between rhetoric and reality is emerging as the dominant driver of the Obama narrative. The contrast is no longer between the young, personable, historic candidate Obama and a creaky, cranky old Republican White Guy, it’s between what America thought it was getting in a President Obama (cool, reasonable and beyond partisanship) and what it now sees as the reality of a President Obama (government spending out of control, an uncertain hand on foreign policy, broken promises, more bureaucrats, etc. etc.).
Please read the entire article for full effect. President Obama has been at the helm for about six and a half weeks. In that time period, there has been resistance to his plans in the forms of “Going Galt” via Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged, the coming Chicago Tea Party, many calls of socialism and facism (with dollops of history’s boogeymen comparisons), Obama “The Wealth Destroyer” (courtesy of Jim Cramer), Conservative Overlord Rush Limbaugh and skyrocketing ratings, general nastiness (the way it is these days), and other “grand” odds and ends.
Six and a half weeks and already calls of impeachment, cabinet resignations/firing/step downs, and “America is over”. My fellow Americans, I respect our right to resist. By all means, continue to do so and NEVER let anyone tell you not to when you believe in a cause or issue. But I’m wondering: when we resist so hard, so quickly, so violent rhetorically, and where the only solution (in that resistance) is for a President to basically quit without a chance, WHILE simultaneously trashing those who voted for that President, do we diminish the very resistance? And in doing that, America itself?
Now let me be very clear, I have issues with the Obama Administration’s direction in areas. I have expressed those issues here as well as with conservatives and liberals I know personally. But one thing that all my friends and associates agree on is that this entire financial situation is wracked with big unknowns. Will big spending help or hurt? Would tax cuts help or hurt? More or less infrastructure investment? Banks let to fail or not? Higher or lower taxes on the wealthy? How do we save the middle class? How much or how little health care reform? Save more or save less? So on and so forth. So many persuasive arguments from every corner and such a massive problem to deal with. Yet we have an elected leader and elected Congress (with a Democratic majority) in the role of The Decider. And they have decided (for the most part).
Our Presidents are elected to four year terms to maintain some consistency at the highest level of government. If this is the level of resistance at six and a half weeks, what will it be in 13 weeks? 26 weeks? 39 weeks? Will it just escalate regardless if President Obama is more successful than not? Will it turn even more volcanic (resistance) if President Obama is less successful than not? How far will it go and at what costs?
My biggest fear these days is that if we don’t check our “resistance” in some ways, we will never allow Presidents time to try anything. Presidents will be on the defensive from Day One and be boxed in. And when a person is boxed in, the reaction can be disastrous.
The Left launched a fusillade at former President Bush that is still echoing to this day. The Right will not be outdone. Resistance is an American right. But can we diminish it when we attack SO hard, SO furious, and SO soon? Or am I just a hand-wringer worrying over nothing? Or are we in the infant stages of a revolution against government in general no matter who is POTUS (this financial crisis and other issues fueling the perfect storm)?
I’m not complex. Don’t have time for all that. And all that complex stuff bad for the stomach. Just color me simple and plain with a twist.