When Normalcy Is Revolution (excerpts here – read the entire article)
Victor Davis Hanson summarizes so effectively:
. . . Obama mostly ran on pretty normal Democratic policies rather than a hard-left agenda. His platform included opposition to gay marriage, promises to balance the budget and a bipartisan foreign policy.
Instead, what followed was a veritable “hope and change” revolution not seen since the 1930s. Obama pursued a staunchly progressive agenda — one that went well beyond the relatively centrist policies upon which he had campaigned. The media cheered and signed on.
Soon, the border effectively was left open. Pen-and-phone executive orders offered immigrant amnesties. The Senate was bypassed on a treaty with Iran and an intervention in Libya. .. ..
The national debt nearly doubled during Obama’s two terms. Overregulation, higher taxes, near-zero interest rates and the scapegoating of big businesses slowed economic recovery. Economic growth never reached 3 percent in any year of the Obama presidency — the first time that had happened since Herbert Hoover’s presidency . . . .
For all the hysteria over the bluntness of the mercurial Trump, his agenda marks a return to what used to be seen as fairly normal, as the U.S. goes from hard left back to the populist center. . . .
A revolutionary federal absorption of health care failed to fulfill Obama’s promises and soon proved unviable.
Culturally, the iconic symbols of the Obama revolution were the “you didn’t build that” approach to businesses and an assumption that race/class/gender would forever drive American politics, favorably so for the Democrats. . . .
Half the country is having a hard time adjusting to Trumpism, confusing Trump’s often unorthodox and grating style with his otherwise practical and mostly centrist agenda.
In sum, Trump seems a revolutionary, but that is only because he is loudly undoing a revolution.
Institutional Republic Party
*PRI ~~ interestingly named~~ Institutional Revolutionary Party (Spanish: Partido Revolucionario Institucional, PRI) is a Mexican political party founded in 1929, that held power uninterruptedly in the country for 71 years from 1929 to 2000 . . . Given the tentacles and inculcation of liberalism in the US government and other institutions it will take a “permanent” revolutionary party, true to the Constitution, to keep the principles of the American Revolution alive
