I tried to warn you about Obama, my fellow Democrats

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Barack Obama Charles Dharapak / AP Photo Obama’s shortcomings were eminently foreseeable, says one of McCain’s most prominent Democratic backers. Lynn Forester de Rothschild on how the president’s fake bipartisanship could never hide his true leftist agenda.

The failures of the Obama presidency were clearly telegraphed by the Obama candidacy. I hate to say it, but I told you so.

Back in September 2008, as a lifelong Democratic Party loyalist and activist, I backed John McCain; I told The New York Times, “I love my country more than my party.” Supporting a Republican was the last thing I expected to be doing in the fall of 2008. But I knew it was my only choice, given the decision by the Democratic Party establishment to reject 18 million voters in favor of the inexperienced and ideological Barack Obama…

So if he wasn’t going to be a centrist Democrat in the tradition of Bill Clinton, what did Barack Obama want from his presidency, should he be elected? He told us from the beginning. It was a stunning agenda, but it seemed innocuous, even inspiring, during the campaign. Standing on the steps of the old Illinois State Capitol, announcing his candidacy for president, Obama declared he was running “not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation.” Suddenly now everyone is worried he is trying to transform America. He had said so all along. His is an effort to make a bigger, more intrusive and more costly government. His hope is, and has always been, to turn the country into a nation that looks more like a European social democracy. He ignores that the roots of our strength have always been small government and a dynamic private sector, fostered by both Democrats and Republicans. His cynical use of centrist language as a tool to get elected does not change the fact of his true objectives for America. It is telling that under Obama’s presidency, according to Sunday’s CNN Poll, 37 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of independents and 70 percent of Republicans see the federal government as a threat to the rights of Americans.