How Obama Will Address Voters’ “Buyer’s Remorse”

posted at 10:13 am on August 30, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Fiscal Stimulus ]   

Steve Chapman has an interesting column in today’s Chicago Tribune that analyzes the extent to which American voters misread presidential candidate Barack Obama. By way of explanation, Chapman writes that Obama’s “promise of change was eloquent enough to motivate the left wing of his party but vague enough to make him acceptable to people in the middle.” He goes on to quote then-chairman of the Republican National Committee Mike Duncan as saying after the election that “Barack Obama just ran the most successful moderate Republican presidential campaign since Dwight Eisenhower.”

There is no doubt that Obama, who has turned out to be the most radical president ever elected, had plenty of voters fooled. A case can also be made that many who voted for him now have “buyer’s remorse.” Certainly, that is one plausible interpretation of his rapidly declining poll numbers in the last several months. Today he reaches a new low in his job approval rating in the Rasmussen poll, which has him at -5 (47% approval compared with 52% disapproval).

Much of the unrest can be traced to double-digit disapproval of Obama’s plan for health care reform and concern over runaway government spending since he took office. As of this past Friday, 62% of Rasmussen respondents said they would prefer tax cuts over more government spending as a way of jump-starting the still-ailing economy.

So how will Obama address the concerns now coming from a large segment of the voters? My belief is that he won’t — and this is where Steve Chapman and I part company. There is no doubt in my mind that Obama misrepresented himself to American voters in order to get elected. In fact, the signs of his radicalism were always there for anyone who bothered to read them — both his 20-year membership in a Black Nationalist church and his ties, however tenuous, to people like Bill Ayers were in the news.

I believe there is also no question that, once elected, Obama planned to extend the powers of the state and the office of the president to suit his far-left agenda. I am also convinced that his plan has not changed. Sure, along the way he will need to concede the occasional battle — consider the recent demise of card check and the strong likelihood that whatever version of health care passes will now lack a government option per-se — but he has his sights firmly planted on winning the war.

The “public option” may be off the table, but the “co-op option” is not. With the right amount of massaging and political sleight-of-hand, he can convert the co-op approach into government-run health care. Which has been his call along. Once the government controls one sixth of the economy, there is no turning back.

Louis XIV of France famously said L’état c’est moi (“I am the state”). Barack Obama doesn’t speak French, but that will not likely present an obstacle to his pursuing his grand vision.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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