Don't look now, Mr. President, but change is afoot...
In two days, the Massachusetts election has catalyzed an astonishing reversal of national politics. Suddenly Obamacare seems dead. Was it only Monday that it seemed inevitable? The New York Times was in denial about it this morning, which demonstrates anew that the Times is more out of touch than even, say, Martha Coakley.
If the Administration tries to jam through a bill by "reconciliation", preventing the need for 60 votes in the Senate, the already sour public mood will become even more irate.
Tuesday (see below) I wrote that the tide had changed. Did it ever!
Cap and Trade is dead. Meanwhile, many chances have been squandered to get bi-partisan backing for common sense energy conservation and development of alternatives to foreign oil.
Immigration liberalization is dead.
Now comes a Supreme Court ruling overturning McCain-Feingold's limits on corporate spending on political races. It's as if the Court took a Sanity Pill and suddenly realized that the First Amendment is meant to protect political speech as its number one priority. Without free, unfettered political speech you can't assure the liberty to hold the robust debates upon which democracy depends.
Attempting to recover its populist image, the Administration picked today to attack the banks. But the public is not mad at the banks, as such, but at the government's picking winners and losers among banks and other industries. Taxpayers don't want to pay the bill for big bonuses effectively arranged by the government. They don't like the special treatment for Fannie and Freddie, for example, any more than they like the health care "compromise" that proposed to let union members avoid taxation on high priced health insurance while other workers with such plans were to pay 40%. The background books on these subjects are being written right now and will appear before November, you can be sure.
Meanwhile, the stock reacted to the President's bank proposals with a huge sell-off--down more than 200 points as I write this.
Add to all this the Administration's new recognition that peace between Israel and the Palestinians is not the kind of objective that will yield to new diplomacy. With that you have an Administration revealed as not only out of touch, but out of its depth.
And the tide is coming in: growing deficits, looming inflation, public hostility to the new tax hikes that will occur when the Bush "cuts" expire this year. And most of all: economic stagnation despite all of the--or because of all the--"stimulus".
Republicans will be foolish if they assume that the President's failures are a warrant for GOP over-confidence, however. Far from it. If this week signals a need for the White House and the Congressional majority to try a new, conciliatory approach, it also indicates an opportunity for fresh thinking by the opposition that is both positive and consistent with conservative principles.
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