[BRIGADE] PJB: The Coming Backlash
Published: Fri, 10/17/08
by Patrick J. Buchanan
As Americans render what Catholics call temporal judgment on George
Bush, are they aware of the radical course correction they are
about to make?
This center-right country is about to vastly strengthen a liberal
Congress whose approval rating is 10 percent and implant in
Washington a regime further to the left than any in U.S. history.
Consider.
As of today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat,
anticipates gains of 15-30 seats. Sen. Harry Reid, whose
partisanship grates even on many in his own party, may see his
caucus expand to a filibuster-proof majority where he can ignore
Republican dissent.
Headed for the White House is the most left-wing member of the
Senate, according to the National Journal. To the vice president's
mansion is headed Joe Biden, third most liberal as ranked by the
National Journal, ahead of No. 4, Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders.
What will this mean to America? An administration that is either at
war with its base or at war with the nation.
America may desperately desire to close the book on the Bush
presidency. Yet there is, as of now, no hard evidence it has
embraced Obama, his ideology, or agenda. Indeed, his campaign
testifies, by its policy shifts, that it is fully aware the nation
is still resisting the idea of an Obama presidency.
In the later primaries, even as a panicked media were demanding
that Hillary drop out of the race, she consistently routed Obama in
Ohio and Pennsylvania and crushed him in West Virginia and Kentucky.
By April and May, the Democratic Party was manifesting all the
symptoms of buyer's remorse over how it had voted in January and
February.
Obama's convention put him eight points up. But, as soon as America
heard Sarah Palin in St. Paul, the Republicans shot up 10 points
and seemed headed for victory.
What brought about the Obama-Biden resurgence was nothing Obama and
Biden did, but the mid-September crash of Fannie, Freddie, Lehman
Brothers, AIG, the stock market, where $4 trillion was wiped out,
the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that enraged Middle America
-- and John McCain's classically inept handling of the crisis.
In short, Obama has still not closed the sale. Every time America
takes a second look at him, it has second thoughts, and backs away.
Even after the media have mocked and pilloried Palin and ceded
Obama and Biden victory in all four debates, the nation, according
to Gallup, is slowly moving back toward the Republican ticket.
Moreover, Obama knows Middle America harbors deep suspicions of
him. Thus, he has jettisoned the rhetoric about the "fierce urgency
of now," and "We are the people we've been waiting for," even as he
has jettisoned position after position to make himself acceptable.
His "flip-flops" testify most convincingly to the fact that Obama
knows that where he comes from is far outside the American
mainstream. For what are flip-flops other than concessions that a
position is untenable and must be abandoned?
Flip-flopping reveals the prime meridian of presidential politics.
If an analyst will collate all the positions to which all the
candidates move, he will find himself close to the true center of
national politics.
Thus, though he is the nominee of a party that is in thrall to the
environmental movement, Obama has signaled conditional support for
offshore drilling and pumping out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
While holding to his pledge for a pullout of combat brigades from
Iraq in 16 months, he has talked of "refining" his position and of
a residual U.S. force to train the Iraqi Army and deal with Al Qaeda.
On Afghanistan, he has called for 10,000 more troops and U.S.
strikes in Pakistan to kill Bin Laden, even without prior notice or
the permission of the Pakistani government.
Since securing the nomination, Obama has adopted the Scalia
position on the death penalty for child rape and the right to keep
a handgun in the home. He voted to give the telecoms immunity from
prosecution for colluding in Bush wiretaps. This onetime
sympathizer of the Palestinians now does a passable imitation of
Ariel Sharon.
No Democrat has ever come out of the far left of his party to win
the presidency. McGovern, the furthest left, stayed true to his
convictions and lost 49 states.
Obama has chosen another course. Though he comes out of the
McGovern-Jesse Jackson left, he has shed past positions like
support for partial birth abortion as fast as he has shed past
associations, from William Ayers to ACORN, from the Rev. Jeremiah
Wright to his fellow parishioners at Trinity United.
One question remains: Will a President Obama, with his party in
absolute control of both Houses, revert to the politics and
policies of the Left that brought him the nomination, or resist his
ex-comrades' demands that he seize the hour and impose the agenda
ACORN, Ayers, Jesse, and Wright have long dreamed of?
Whichever way he decides, he will be at war with them, or at war
with us. If Barack wins, a backlash is coming.
SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/2008/10/pjb-the-coming-backlash/