. . . who gave us two terms of Barrack Obama.
Victor Davis Hanson summarizes 8 years of tragedy for America. We have excerpted some of his National Review article. As is usual with such a gifted historian, there is far more to be gained reading it in its entirety. We note that his article dovetails nicely with Rush Limbaugh’s comments today, enhancing them. More on that below, but Hanson’s observations first:
A perfect storm brought into power Barack Obama, a previously little-known Illinois community organizer. He had at best a mediocre record as a state legislator and rookie senator. Yet he quickly dazzled the liberal establishment . . .
McCain, . . . ran as much against Bush as he did against Obama.
Obama ran on his iconic status as the would-be first black president . . . A plumber did better than establishment journalists at prying out a smidgen of Obama’s worldview . . .
A therapeutic foreign policy, adorned by apologies for and contextualization of past American conduct, has turned the Middle East into Somalia and empowered Vladimir Putin, the Chinese apparat, and soon-to-be nuclear Iran . . .
. . . In Obama Farm, waterboarding three confessed terrorists at Guantanamo Bay is a crime against humanity; blowing up 3,000 suspected terrorists and anyone nearby through Predator drone assassinations is the stuff of presidential joking . . .
At home, a natural recovery after a deep recession was aborted by massive government borrowing . . . Obama may well have borrowed more than all previous presidents combined. . . .
Never has a modern president been so pampered by the press, and never has the press been so disrespected for its obsequiousness. After Obama, what will the press do? Will it investigate some future Republican, . . . expose scandals in the IRS or VA, lament the decline of U.S. prestige abroad, . . . (will it) talk of a McCarthy-like administration tapping reporters’ communications and computers, whine about an anemic “jobless” recovery, chart how a president deliberately misled the country about health care, amnesty, or dangers in the Middle East? Will it demand that the next presidential candidate release his college transcripts and medical records or details about his associates?
Race relations have not been worse in over a half-century. . . .
. . . The president’s approval ratings hover at 40 percent. Almost single-handedly, Obama has done to the Democratic party far more damage than Herbert Hoover did to the Republican brand. Not in 70 years have Democratic numbers in the Congress been so bleak.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this liberal implosion is that the Republicans have done little to earn such prominence, . . .
Summarizing the relevant part of Limbaugh’s program today — the Republican Party process politically and legislatively is dominated by their donor class in conjunction with the consultant class (the later serving as the former’s agents). The donor class is not really for smaller government, they just want to be in charge of government to see it better managed. They hate social issues. They hate conventions and platforms, the messiness and what they see as the risk to their agenda.
We would add that jaded conservative operatives, who may have more feeling for the Constitution and the culture, do not resist, indeed they share to a substantial degree the disdain for the grass roots. They combine to raise the specter that only their strategies of lying low can win the fight with Democrats and the liberal media. Rank and file Republicans are scared for their country and they go along, feeling helpless and succumbing to such elements “wisdom.”
Indeed those party elements claim credit for the gains made by Republicans in this year’s elections. We think otherwise. They played on fears of mainstream liberal media reportage to maintain control of candidates. But liberal media is becoming more a bugaboo. It is still formidable in influence but declining in direct effect. Liberal wire services still dominate but there are alternative direct news services with “embedded” reporters. Breibart and others come to mind.
Even if not breaking news the dissemination of the real story and the back story by conservative analysts and commentators is more and more effective. Alternative media (conservative cable TV talk radio and the Internet) while susceptible to narratives inimical to conserving culture, is an arena conservatives can more easily compete in and do, counteracting liberal legacy media. More and more people ignore newspapers and NBC-CBS-ABC-CNN and get their information from the alternative sources.
The election took place in an arena also subject to interest group activities including liberal and conservative and special interests using those avenues. Some were well funded. Many were active. Some messages were more effective. They competed for hearts and minds when the Republican Party and its candidates in particular would not, or did so anemically. The intra-party and candidate consultant class did not win by any strategy of having candidates say little (except in those cases where the candidate was truly incapable). Republicans won because outside groups and the conservative blogosphere using alternative media fought the battles.
Such groups have been informing, educating and motivating so far beyond the Republican Party apparat that any claim to strategic success by the apparat or their donors is laughable. The experience of Obama’s and Democrat policies hitting home and the education warnings and motivations provided by key elements from outside the party defeated Democrats, sometimes in spite of the Republican candidate or party.
DLH and R Mall
