There has been no group of people more responsible for Barack Obama’s breath taking damage to the country – nor his total lack of being held account for that damage- than the Republican establishment. Oh sure, the Jurassic media and Big Hollywood and Big Education and Big Wall Street have all played their roles, but the main enabler is the GOP-e. Make no mistake about that.
This was capped off recently with the passage of the obscene two year budget deal, guaranteeing the exploding growth of big government and big deficits – but at least sheltering establishment hacks from catching grief at Washington cocktail parties over yet another phony shutdown panic. And by sheltered hacks, I mean many at Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and National Review – not to mention the consultant class and far too many in The House and The Senate. Meanwhile, new Speaker Paul Ryan was elected as a Republican that only Democrats can love. And many do!
The budget deal, by the way, is the same thing as giving Obama a ninth year in office. If a Republican wins the White House, and I think that is a somewhat likely development, that poor bloke will take the blame for another free enterprise-killing Obama liberal fantasy budget. This will increase the odds of Democrats winning in 2018 and 2020 of course to boot.
Thank you establishment.
But this protecting of Obama by the GOP-e has been going on since before Obama even took office. If you can remember back to the dark days of November and December of 2008 and January of 2009, you’ll recall that more than 2.2 million jobs were lost to the economy during that 90 day period. Yes, 2.2 million in 3 months.
Now hmmm…..what could possibly have happened in late fall of 2008 to precipitate such disaster? Oh yeah, Obama was elected President in the very first part of November, along with a radical looney leftist Congress led by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid with near super majority status. In other words, it’s a pretty clear cut case that businesses, fearing Obama, Reid and Pelosi slashed and burned payroll and other employee expenses as fast as they could.
Frankly, a case can be made that the near 500 thousand jobs slashed in October – when it was obvious McCain was not even serious about challenging Obama – are on Obama too. Naturally the sycophants at MSNBC and The Huffington Post and Slate would scoff at such a notion. Probably Fox News or the WSJ as well.
But consider: you own a business, and you decide in November 2008 to lay employees off to survive. Now is it what Bush did, or what you fear Obama will do, that motivates you? The answer, for any thinking adult, is easy. Business owners and manager must see around the corner and plan ahead of events. That’s what many did in late ’08 and early ’09.
Yes I know the left, and many in the establishment, will say the Bush crash caused the lost jobs, not the election of a full on socialist government. Let’s examine this “Bush economic crash.” The causes included, in whatever order you want to list them, shocking energy prices due to liberal restraints on our oil and gas industries, unsustainable lending practices pushed forward by liberals from the days of Jimmy Carter through Bill Clinton, not to mention the mostly liberal Wall Street cronies playing the insider game.
In short, liberals made borrowing too easy and drilling too hard – and both of those chickens came home to roost in a perfect storm. The cronyism in the Wall Street derivative class just magnified the real devastation in the Main Street economy.
Yet the way we keep score, especially in the media, assures us that those 2.8 million job losses are not part of Obama’s record. In fact, bumbling stumbling McCain, who is the epitome of an out of touch establishment figure, couldn’t bring himself to mention this during the campaign.
And how could he? The “new tone” strategy of Karl Rove and W. Bush had so poisoned the well regarding Bush for 8 years – with blame that he deserved but also with a lot of blame he did not – that McCain ran against Bush, not Obama. That was never going to work. So yes, establishment strategy had preordained that an establishment candidate must run against an establishment President – instead of running against the opposition.
And of course Mitt Romney’s campaign did no better in 2012. They too were jumping on the blame Bush bandwagon, not realizing that every single voter who blames Bush is going to vote Obama, period. And indeed, those percentages match almost identically. This is no coincidence. And a little reminder here: Paul Ryan agreed with Joe Biden in the VP debate that this was the case!
I’ll never forget it, and there’s a broken flat screen in a hotel in Charlotte to prove it.
So I submit that the Republican establishment started protecting Obama’s legacy and increasing his mayhem potential as early as 60 days before he was elected – and then another 75 days before inauguration. They continued that protection throughout the 2012 campaign, a campaign driven by Rove and Haley Barbour’s “focus group” strategy. And of course, with with the budget deal surrender last week, our wizards in the establishment have now secured his ability to destroy the country for at least a year after he leaves office, and likely getting some poor Republican the blame for it.
This is why Republican polls are now dominated by two non politicians plus an anti establishment crusading Senator. The era of Rove-stupid, not the era of Reagan, needs to come to a close.
This is an installment in the series “Rove-Stupid: the new definition of the Republican Establishment. Read the rest here.
Edmund Wright is a contributor at Breitbart, American Thinker, Newsmax TV, Talk Radio Network – and author of several books including Amazon Elections Best Seller WTF? How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost…Again
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