what a difference a year makes

Last year at this time, the Obamacrats were on top of the world and the media was writing the obituary of the GOP. Conservatism was dead, or so we were told. The country wanted big government and was willing to pay for them -- or so we were told. The Republicans were just a regional permanenet minority party that would waste away as demographic trends moved against them.

Now just one year later, everything has reversed. The GOP won big in last November's elections. The wins were not just in the the Southern regional base announced by the media, but also in places like New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania that the GOP has permanently lost - or so we were told. The current polls show the likelihood of major Republican gains in November. True, these gains are nearly all in the Southern regional base announced by the media: those Obamacrats in biggest danger of losing come from Dixie states like Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Illinois, Nevada and North Dakota. Oh wait! These are not southern states. Maybe they are planning to move.

The point is that the Obamacrats have overinterpreted their mandate. What they won was a mandate for not beinig George Bush. It was not a vote for big government. It was not a vote for national healthcare. It was not a vote for new taxes to fight the possibility that man is causing global warming. Indeed, it was a vote to get someone who would focus on getting the economy back on track and lowering unemployment.

What the Obamacrats have done is to throw away their political capital on issues that most people do not care about. Obama has managed to look weak, act weak, and even hurt himself in foreign affairs when he does the right thing. The apology tours have not helped here at home or with those abroad. The failures to support the protesters in Iran or the democrats in Honduras have also hurt, just like the idiocy of injecting the settlement issue into the Arab Israeli peace process (sorry to use the wrods Arab-israeli and peace proces in the same sentence. The decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, while correct in my opinion, was accompanied by confusion as to the end date of the commitment and by a major show of dithering for months on what to do. The answer was easy to reach; yet, Obama took over 100 days to come to the only logical conclusion.

At home, Obama has manged to mess up the things he touched and really mess up the things he tried. Thus, he let Pelosi and friends write a stimulus bill that he very little stimulus in it. Then he tried to sell the bill by promising that it would keep unemployment under 8% with a great focus on shovel ready projects, etc. In truth, the only shovel needed for the stimulus bill was the one to shovel away the BS that came out in support of its passage. As a result, the US has spent nearly three quarters of a trillion dollars in support of various Obamacrat interest groups and unemployment broke through 10%. Indeed, last month Obama hailed the decline in the rate to 10% even though the decline was due not to more jobs (the was a net reduction in jobs) but rather to more people just leaving the workforce for good since there were no jobs available.

Cap and trade is another issue where Obama has made a mess. Again, Obama did not write the bill but left it to Congressmen like the wacky Waxman to decide what the bill should contain. Obama's failure to lead on this issue let the bill become another christmas tree of nonsensical plans to reduce greenhouse gases by things like farm subsidies and low income housing. If the conection to global warming is not apparent, that is because there is no connection. Now, with the discovery that the science behing the theory that man-made global warming exists may have been phony, obama has not wavered for a moment. Imagine if he had come forward and announced a US effort to put together the true climate data. Instead he responded in the way that would make the ever green (for the money he is scamming) Al Gore proud. Obama simply ignored the whole controversy.

Then there are Obama's strong commitments like ending don't ask don't tell, closing Gitmo, etc. Those have not gone as planned.

Finally, there is healthcare. Obama and his cronies are still pushing ahead with a plan which changes daily. The public opposes the effort according to the poll data, but that makes no difference to the Great Barack.

My guess is that the obamacrats have signed there own death warrants. come next November the GOP will be truly regional, but the region will be the entire USA. I still think that it is too much to ask for the GOP to take back Congress, but the days of unbridled Obamacrat power will be over.