They Call These Accomplishments?
By David Limbaugh

If you read through the Washington Monthly’s list of Obama’s top 50 accomplishments, you’ll quickly understand why my brother, Rush, properly wanted him to fail.

When Rush said he wanted Obama to fail, everyone knew he was talking about his policies, and for those few who pretended otherwise, he explained it a thousand times: He wanted his policies to fail because his policies are disastrous for America.

Obama has certainly failed to exhibit leadership at very important points, such as his taking a pass during budget negotiations and his legendary vacillation at key foreign policy junctures. But in terms of the general, statist direction of the country, he is captain of the sinking ship.

Obama wasn’t kidding when he promised to fundamentally transform America, and he has succeeded in doing so, to the everlasting detriment of the country. Four more years of this and it’s hard to imagine what kind of shape we’ll be in.

Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper and Siyu Hu co-wrote the piece for the Washington Monthly. If you want to see just how far apart red America and blue America are, you must examine their list, recognizing that they are actually bragging about these “accomplishments.”

Let’s take a quick look at just a small fraction of these items:

–He passed Obamacare. As we’ve elsewhere noted, he represented that he would bend the cost curve down and make health care more accessible. Already we’ve discovered that the costs are double Obama’s projections, and people are losing their own plans in droves, contrary to his promises. Further calamity awaits as the law goes into effect.

–He passed the stimulus. Can you believe that Glastris, Cooper and Hu are bragging about Obama’s having spent almost a trillion dollars when America is on the financial precipice? Much of it was squandered in political payoffs and waste and dedicated to failed green projects. There were no shovel-ready jobs. Precious little was spent on infrastructure, despite Obama’s promises, and the overall result was that the American economy lost millions of jobs — even after you factor in the jobs that were allegedly “saved or created.” Obama can move the goal posts until the cows come home, but the one he set himself — that unemployment wouldn’t rise above 8 percent — has been as demonstrably wrong as any in the annals of presidential pledge breaking.

–He improved America’s image abroad. Are the authors serious? He has repeatedly offended our allies and pandered to our enemies, with the net result of alienating both groups. Professional pollsters say he is less popular on the Arab street than was President George W. Bush.

–He “kicked banks out of the federal student loan program.” And this is a good thing? He originally muscled out private banks through an abuse of federal authority in order to steal this money from the private sector to count toward Obamacare scoring when he needed to pretend it would be deficit-neutral. What did he do with this $60 billion in illusory savings? He pledged $40 billion of it to inflate student loans and used the other $20 billion to deceive the Congressional Budget Office in its scoring. Worse still, by increasing these student loans, Obama will create the opposite effect of what he’s advertising; the middle class will have to pay more for education because these increased subsidies to universities will cause more tuition inflation. The middle class will also bear the brunt of the increased number of failed loans Obama’s executive orders make inevitable, as taxpayers will subsidize the increased shortfall.

–He boosted fuel efficiency standards. Keep in mind that his Environmental Protection Agency did this through an administrative ruling when Congress would not pass his Draconian cap-and-trade bill because it would have had a crushing economic impact on the economy.

–He protected two liberal seats on the Supreme Court, which speaks for itself.

–He achieved the New START, by which he granted Russia major concessions for little in return, making us more vulnerable to other threats by unilaterally reducing our nuclear capabilities when other nations are expanding their capabilities and terrorists are in hot pursuit of these weapons.

–He trimmed our missile defense. This is just frighteningly irresponsible.

–He invested heavily in renewable technology. Solyndra, anyone?

–He killed the F-22 when China and Russia are developing their next-generation fighters. Under what sane rationale?

What has he done about the most egregious problems facing America, discretionary and entitlement spending? Absolutely nothing. And we’re headed for a colossal train wreck. I can’t quit obsessing over this, and I’m frankly shocked that everyone else isn’t obsessing over it 24/7 when our national survival hangs in the balance.

Are the Bush-hating liberals correct; are there now two Americas? Remember that these are being touted as accomplishments, not failures.

The Left, Not Social Conservatives, Threatens Religious Liberty
By David Limbaugh

Now hear this: No Republicans on the national political scene, including Rick Santorum, threaten our religious liberty. Many Democrats, including President Obama and Senate Democrats, do. And they’ve struck again with the Senate’s defeat of the Blunt amendment.

President Obama, who seems to spend as much time community organizing as he does attending to his executive duties, doubtlessly conspired with his crack opposition research trolls and the liberal media to shoehorn the contraception issue into the 2012 presidential campaign.

What do I mean about Obama’s spending time community organizing? Well, he is using the office of the presidency to intimidate the Koch brothers into disclosing their donors’ names. He and his minions falsely, with malice aforethought, accused the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of receiving foreign contributions, with no evidence, and when challenged to substantiate it, they taunted that it was up to the chamber and its defenders to prove a negative. Obama’s Justice Department has taxpayer-funded employees posing as ordinary American citizens and posting pro-Obama agenda comments on various websites. His Justice Department attacks Republicans genuinely attempting to monitor actual voter fraud and protects his friends who engage in real-life voter intimidation. I could go on.

What do I mean about Democrats and their cronies shoehorning the contraception issue? I’m hardly among the first 100 people to point out that George Stephanopoulos gratuitously injected into a GOP presidential debate a bizarre question about contraception. Mitt Romney was so taken aback he was almost rendered — uncharacteristically — speechless.

In no time, talk shows and the Internet were abuzz about the issue, and a video of Rick Santorum talking about contraception went viral. Even some on the right — though not social conservatives — were apparently led to believe that if elected president, Santorum would single-handedly usher in a Catholic theocracy. It didn’t seem to matter that in that same video, Santorum expressly assured us that he would not attempt to force his views on contraception through legislation.

When you ask complainants to specify exactly how Santorum or any other social conservative represents a threat to religious liberty or would even remotely infringe on any of our constitutional rights concerning it, you get nothing but innuendo and fantastic hysteria.

Santorum and other social conservatives may well annoy those who don’t want to hear about social issues, but they do not represent any kind of threat to religious liberties, nor are they any less concerned about the cataclysmic fiscal and economic issues threatening our nation or any less determined and equipped to address them simply because they also care about social issues.

President Obama and the Democratic leadership, on the other hand, do represent a threat to religious liberty, and they invoke religion as often as Republicans — whether from the presidential bully pulpit and National Prayer Breakfast podium or in their churches.

Democrats warn that Republicans will use their governmental power to cram our religious values down their throats, but at least when we vote our values, we do so through the constitutionally prescribed democratic processes rather than through undemocratic, tyrannical judicial usurpations such as with abortion and same-sex marriage jurisprudence.

President Obama is the one who, in a flagrant breach of his numerous promises, is facilitating the federal funding of abortifacients and cramming this issue down the throats of the several states.

He’s the one forcing us — because of his “religious” values; listen to his prayer breakfast speech — to buy health insurance and telling us what types of coverage must be included in the health insurance policies we purchase, even if some of those violate our rights of religious and moral conscience and thus our religious liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

He’s the one who, when called on this outrage, patronizingly pretended to compromise on the issue by forcing insurance companies to pay for these objectionable practices, as if those costs wouldn’t be passed through to those with conscience objections and as if the insurance companies have no conscience protections themselves.

He’s the one who, along with his Democratic majority in the Senate, tabled the amendment by Sen. Roy Blunt to allow employers to opt out of providing health care coverage that violates their conscience rights. The Blunt amendment, it should be noted, wouldn’t deny any woman access to contraceptives or even abortifacients; it would just exempt employers from being forced to subsidize them. As usual, the government compulsion proceeds from the left, not the right. Adding insult to injury, Democrats, as usual, drench their support of the coerced coverage in the euphemism of women’s health.

We social conservatives might annoy you because we sometimes talk about our faith-based values (while the left talks about its values just as much), but we represent no threat to anyone’s religious liberties. The same cannot be said about the habitually projecting political left.

Obama Invites Backlash on Conscience Rule Betrayal
By David Limbaugh

As God’s instrument, Moses parted the Red Sea. Well, it appears President Obama has a different idea. With a wave of his hand, he’s going to reunite our bitterly divided political waters on the hottest of hot-button issues.

Don’t get me wrong; Obama’s conscious effort to divide Americans on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion and wealth for political purposes is alive and thriving. That’s a separate phenomenon.

What I’m talking about here is his apparent conviction that by sheer force of his presence, his charisma, his aura and his gift for supernatural nuance, he can utter magical words on any bitterly controversial matter and instantly reconcile opposing factions, even on matters that do not lend themselves to neat solutions.

This exaggerated sense of self-worth, not just his visceral liberal inclination toward appeasement, is what leads him to believe he can negotiate with terrorists and persuade them to renounce their jihad against America upon witnessing his world apology tour, his outreach to Muslims in Cairo, his witch hunt against CIA interrogators, and his shoutouts to the Muslim Brotherhood. (Don’t tell him, but polls show he’s even less popular than President George W. Bush was in the Muslim world.)

His stunning absence of any awareness of his own limitations (Socrates’ wisdom yardstick) is obviously what convinced him he could deliver a speech at the University of Notre Dame that would induce a bilateral epiphany in which both sides of the abortion debate would finally realize that until he had deconstructed the issue so elegantly, they had been looking through the abortion glass darkly. Henceforth, they would see clearly and bask in the glow of harmonic convergence where pro-life advocates would appreciate the bizarre concept of a mother’s sacred reproductive rights and the pro-aborts would come to understand, er, never mind. Only one side in these arguments needs to show movement — the side that opposes Obama’s beliefs.

This robust arrogance is what made Obama believe he could convince freedom-loving Americans that they would love socialized health care. You’d think he might have been discouraged when they still didn’t embrace it after 54 speeches, but trapped in his own self-perpetuating personal echo chamber, he had no other options but to keep pummeling us with his propaganda until he decided to just bribe, cheat and steal in order to get the bill crammed through. Through it all, he never lost faith in his ability to place square pegs into round holes.

So it is that we read in The Washington Post that Obama thinks he can lull us into kumbaya over his death-culture assault on Americans’ religious liberty with his rule requiring religious institutions to cover contraception as part of their employee health plans. This mandate would require all employers, including religiously affiliated colleges and hospitals that receive federal funds, to provide female employees the full breadth of health care coverage, including birth control, the “morning-after pill” and sterilization services. He deceitfully promised in that Notre Dame speech, by the way, that he would respect the conscience rights of religious institutions and that he would not invoke this abominable rule that he is now vigorously and defiantly embracing.

Once again, he must think he can placate opponents by patting them on the head and telling them they just need to settle down, see the superior wisdom and morality of his position, and understand that everything will be fine if they’ll just believe in him. Yes, that’s right; the Post reports that administration officials are telling liberal groups and lawmakers that Obama is not backing down from his hard-line position on the rule, but assuring “religious groups that a phase-in period will allow the two sides to agree on an approach to putting the rule into practice.”

You see, in Obama’s grandiose world — in which rhetoric, sophism and endless speechifying reign supreme — every impasse can be breached with his miraculously penetrating silver tongue.

But this time, as has been increasingly the case for the hapless, unreflective Obama, his obfuscation will not work. As Anthony R. Picarello Jr., general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said, “so far, (the administration’s promise to) ‘work this thing through’ is just the sugar-coated version of ‘force you to comply.’”

Indeed, this authoritarian administration prohibited a Catholic Army chaplain from reading a letter by Timothy Broglio — archbishop of the Military Services, USA — criticizing the mandate because with it, “the Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States” in a way that is “denying Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”

One way or another — either by backing down or by facing an electoral spanking — Obama will not win this one. With the backlash he is inviting, he might finally learn the limits of his mythical magic.

Obama’s Misstatements on the Union
By David Limbaugh

Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It’s hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation.

Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space.

Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation’s and Americans’ financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record.

He said, “We’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more.” But everyone knows he’s had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, “Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse.”

Obama said, “I’m prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors.” Well, that’s mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the “programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors” is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan’s plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.

Obama said, again, that to avoid Warren Buffett’s secretary’s paying a higher tax rate than her boss, we should adopt the “Buffett rule,” prescribing that “if you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes.” The Heritage Foundation tells us that according to Congressional Budget Office data, the top 1 percent of income earners already pay 30 percent of their income in all federal taxes. In addition, when wealthy people pay a lower effective income tax rate, it’s a result either of lawful deductions (often charitable) or of capital gains and dividends on property they’ve acquired with money that has already been taxed. Also, before the wealthy realize many of these gains, the businesses that produce these gains have already paid a corporate income tax rate of 35 percent (the highest in the world). This means that Buffett, on much of this income, pays an effective rate of 50 percent (35 percent corporate plus 15 percent capital gains). Indeed, 99.4 percent of millionaires and billionaires pay far more in taxes in actual and relative terms than middle- and low-income earners, and for Obama to suggest otherwise is not only deeply deceitful but also damaging — because of the class envy he constantly stokes — to the social fabric of this country.

Obama said he wants to lure American companies home yet has steadfastly refused, notwithstanding his SOTU rhetoric, to agree to rectify the primary reasons they leave: punitive corporate income tax rates and onerous regulations.

Obama suggested that he is not only a pioneer in clean energy but also bullish on domestic energy. His record on the former is disgraceful, and both his claim and record on the latter are insulting. He has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on quixotic green-energy programs with Solyndra and its cousins, spending $5 million for every single “renewable energy” job he has created. He has defiantly refused to take responsibility and is continuing to pursue more. He has waged war on domestic coal, natural gas and oil. He not only imposed a punitive moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf but also lawlessly reinstituted another one after federal district and appellate courts shot down his initial moratorium. When he lifted this revised moratorium, drilling remained in limbo because of the administrative obstacles his administration had imposed on drilling permits. His actions caused devastating losses to the Gulf economy and jobs, which rippled throughout the nation’s economy. Most recently, to placate his environmental extremist base, he blocked the job-producing Keystone XL pipeline for no legitimate reason.

Obama threatened to withhold federal subsidies to colleges unless they hold tuition costs down without recognizing that one of the main reasons they’ve skyrocketed is the profligate subsidies he continues to increase.

He railed against bailouts after having established a record as President Bailout. He blamed banks again for causing the housing crisis and economic meltdown by making loans to people who couldn’t afford them, without admitting that government, mainly his party, was the primary culprit.

He said he’d established the closest military cooperation with Israel in history, but he has bullied that nation for three years, and our relationship has rarely been more strained.

Believe me, I could go on.

Obama’s Motto
By David Limbaugh

President Obama is calling for dramatic defense cuts that could threaten our national survival while obstructing structural reforms to our entitlement programs that are essential for our national financial survival. It just doesn’t get much worse than this.

President George W. Bush attempted in good faith to reform Social Security, and Democrats savaged him. Rep. Paul Ryan proposed a comprehensive financial plan that would, as painlessly as possible, restore national fiscal sanity, and Obama and his Democrats have misrepresented the plan (saying it would end Medicare) and used class warfare and fear-mongering to kill it in the cradle.

Indeed, Republicans have repeatedly submitted and passed comprehensive and detailed budget plans to restore our financial solvency, and Senate Democrats have blocked every one of them. Meanwhile, the Democratic Senate hasn’t produced a budget in almost three years. Three years!

It is undeniable, undebatable, irrefutable, inarguable and certain that the United States is spending at a level that will destroy it. It is equally indisputable that Democrats have shown no willingness to join Americans in tackling the problem.

Every time you confront a liberal with these incontrovertible facts, his response is not: “You are simply wrong.” It is, “Bush started this.” Well, Bush did spend too much, but he was a piker compared with Obama. But it doesn’t much matter who caused it anymore, does it?

If your family is facing a serious problem, is your first instinct to blame the culprit — other than to identify it for purposes of devising a solution — or to address the problem?

If Democrats truly believe Bush spent too much, then shouldn’t they cooperate to bring spending under control rather than use Bush’s spending as an excuse to up the ante? While Bush spent too much, including on education and his prescription drug entitlement, Democrats thought he didn’t spend nearly enough on education (Ted Kennedy constantly derided Bush over it), and part of the reason Bush advanced prescription drugs was to prevent Democrats from implementing a far costlier package.

If Democrats had any concern about spending, they wouldn’t have crammed through Obamacare, which will increase the federal health care budget obscenely. If they had the slightest concern about our upside-down national balance sheet, they wouldn’t have spent $900 billion in a worthless, corrupt, ineffectual “stimulus” program and be clamoring for another one. They wouldn’t urinate federal money into dead-end green projects, such as Solyndra. They wouldn’t have desperately tried to pass a monumentally wasteful cap-and-trade bill that wouldn’t have made a dent in global temperature in a hundred years, even if you blindly accept all the superstitious nonsense the environmentalists propagate.

Seriously, people, let Democrats and Obama defenders obfuscate all they want, but have you seen the charts? Have you noticed the dramatic acceleration in spending and deficits since Obama took office? Have you seen the side-by-side comparisons of America’s financial future under the Ryan plan and Obama’s current spending trajectory? Democrats cannot make Obama’s financial path sustainable simply by blaming Bush for what happened before. We have to get about the business of cutting spending and reforming entitlements now because every year we wait, our problems are compounded and become that much more difficult to reverse.

We must come to terms with the fact that Democrats are trying not to control domestic spending — and growth-stifling tax hikes won’t substantially reduce the deficit, much less the debt. Everything they are about depends on continually increasing spending, and you see it in their every budget. The only plans that even hint at spending cuts (actually reductions in spending increases using baseline budgeting) are the unspecified ones Obama outlines in his speeches. His actual budgets show no appreciable cuts in the deficits as far as the eye can see. Why aren’t people, even Democrats, freaking out over this? I’ll never understand this.

Obama is now proposing drastic cuts in our defense budget at a time when global terrorism is on the rise and other nations — from China to Russia to Iran to North Korea, most of whom mean us harm — are aggressively increasing their defense budgets. We are sharing nuclear secrets with Russia and sending technology to China that can be used for military purposes. Our war game projections show we might lose a conventional war against China over a disputed Taiwan Strait. We have killed our F-22 Raptor, while China and Russia are ramping up their next-generation fighters.

Obama’s motto seems to be this: If spending is called for by the Constitution, bleed it dry; if the Constitution forbids it, no holds barred. Gut nation-saving defense spending; increase nation-destroying domestic spending.

When will the whole nation wake up to this madness?

Obama and Holder Should Put the Race Card back in the Deck
By David Limbaugh

President Obama led us to believe that he would be a post-racial president who would bring the races together, but it’s gotten to where you can’t criticize this most leftist administration in American history without someone accusing you of racism.

The most recent example involves criticism of Attorney General Eric Holder over Fast and Furious, an operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which was overseen by the Justice Department. It involved the indirect sale of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, which resulted in some 300 killings in Mexico, including the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Throughout, despite having received detailed memos from DOJ officials about it, Holder has denied he was aware of it.

The scandal and Holder’s stonewalling have led to some 60 congressmen demanding his resignation, and 75 cosponsoring a House resolution calling for a “no-confidence” vote on his performance as attorney general.

Holder has defiantly denied culpability, and President Obama, without betraying the slightest concern, has proclaimed his complete confidence in Holder. In a New York Times interview, Holder suggested race was partially driving a “more extreme segment” against him and Obama.

Holder said, “This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our relationship, and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.” When pressed for some proof to support Holder’s allegation, the Justice Department did not respond. Nor has the White House distanced itself from Holder’s comments.

Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson had earlier played the race card regarding Fast and Furious, calling it “another manufactured controversy by the Second Amendment, NRA Republican tea party movement.” He said, “Now, how many firearms are sold to al-Qaida terrorists, to other convicted felons, to domestic violence perpetrators, to convicted felons, to white supremacists?”

Nor was this the first time Holder had invoked the issue of race. During a speech commemorating Black History Month shortly after he became attorney general, Holder said the American people are “essentially a nation of cowards when it comes to racial matters.”

This seemed to many a curious way to celebrate the election of an African-American president, not to mention reflecting Holder’s sizable preoccupation with race and his apparent perception of societal problems through a racial lens. It could also help to explain his Justice Department’s indefensible dismissal of an already won voter intimidation case against New Black Panther Party members using the specious excuse that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

None of this comes as any surprise, however, because President Obama had telegraphed his race-oriented mindset in his book, in his church association and in his projecting statement that small-town people “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them.” He has worn race on his sleeve numerous times as president.

When a white police officer in Cambridge, Mass., arrested Harvard professor Henry Gates, an African-American, Obama, without having heard both sides of the case, publicly injected himself into the local matter and gratuitously smeared the entire police department as having “acted stupidly.” In addition, Obama told guests at a private dinner at the White House that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency, especially among tea party members.

Not only has Obama made these viscerally charged racial statements, he has also consciously appealed to minority groups with specific reference to their race. In a Democratic National Committee video in April 2010, he urged “young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women … to stand together once again.” Shortly before the November 2010 congressional elections, he told an audience that Republicans “are counting on black folks staying home.” Separately, he appealed to Latino voters not to stay home at election time but to “punish our enemies” and not go along with the Republicans’ “cynical attempt to discourage Latinos from voting.”

These developments are most disturbing and discouraging. There exists a great ideological divide in this nation over which of two primary sets of policy prescriptions ought to be adopted to rescue America from its economic malaise, its bankrupting debt and a host of other major issues.

Conservative opposition to Obama isn’t about race, and I’m confident this administration is well aware of that but is using the race card anyway, out of political desperation, to the destruction of the nation, and to racial relations. It’s disgraceful and unconscionable.

Obama’s ‘60 Minutes’ Interview Gives Grading on a Curve New Meaning
By David Limbaugh

The most disturbing aspect of President Obama’s “60 Minutes” interview is how sincere he sounded when misrepresenting his record. I’m not sure whether I would prefer that he be lying or self-deluded, but there’s plenty of each to go around.

Obama is a left-wing ideologue, a true believer, who is convinced that his agenda is mandated by a superior moral imperative (from who knows where) and that it must be advanced irrespective of the consequences, because no matter how bad they might be, they would have been worse without his agenda.

Indeed, such is his blind faith that his policy failures reinforce rather than shatter his belief system, and he becomes more delusional the more he fails and has to rationalize those failures.

The upshot of his message to his interviewer, Steve Kroft, was that he deserves the highest marks for all “things that don’t have to do with the economy and don’t have to do with Congress.”

So despite his muddled, ad hoc approach to foreign policy: his mistreatment of Israel, his pattern of insulting foreign leaders, his fair-weather support for some democratic movements and betrayal of others (Iran, Honduras), his manifest unpopularity in the Muslim world, and his gutting of our military defenses (F-22, our missile defenses and Europe’s, and our nuclear arsenal) while China, Russia, Iran and others augment theirs, he claims that we are now respected again around the world and that we are stronger.

How about the economy? Well, he thinks that the people will come to see he’s turned things around and saved us from a depression but that it’s going to take a long time for a complete recovery because it took so long to get “us into this mess.” So he believes he’s even performed well on the economy, except a) he would have done even better had it not been for congressional Republicans, b) the people don’t realize how well he’s done because too many are still hurting, c) even if things are bad, it’s Bush’s fault or, if you prefer, it’s because we’re going through an economic disruption that occurs every 75 years, and d) whatever economic problems remain could be solved by pouring yet more money into education, green technology and the infrastructure. (I realize “d” makes less sense than any of them, but that’s what his programmed mind always spits out, no matter the evidence.)

He insists he didn’t overpromise, never mind his promises to find “good jobs for the jobless,” to lower the oceans and keep unemployment at less than 8 percent. He takes credit for bending our health care cost curve down when it is now indisputable already — even before the bulk of it has been implemented — that Obamacare is greatly increasing health care costs.

He said he has offered a “very specific” and “very detailed” deficit reduction plan when everyone paying attention knows he offered generalities, with no real, concrete proposals for actually reducing spending, especially entitlement spending.

He said we could balance the budget by increasing taxes on the wealthy alone. Actually, his statement was more ludicrous than that. He said: “We ended up asking the wealthiest Americans to do a little bit more in terms of taxes. Going back to rates that would still be lower than they were under Ronald Reagan, our deficit problems would be solved.” What? How is it possible we ended up with a chief executive who can make such preposterous assertions? Apart from the Reagan comparison, letting the Bush cuts for the highest income bracket expire would generate only about $70 billion a year (assuming a static economy), which is less than 5 percent of the deficit.

Amazingly, Obama admitted that his party and his base opposed entitlement reforms but that in his magnanimity, he agreed to work on them anyway. Well, that’s big of him, but the truth is that he has steadfastly obstructed such reforms, which means he has steadfastly obstructed any possibility of balancing the budget and getting the national debt under control.

But there’s an explanation for that, which is even more alarming. He doesn’t think the deficit (or debt) is a major problem. He said, “The truth is that compared to other countries around the world, our deficit problems are completely manageable.” That’s why he wants another half-trillion-dollar stimulus.

Lest we think these anomalies are solely because of Obama’s being a true believer rather than a hyper-partisan purveyor of falsehoods, note that he also told Kroft that Republicans are for “rolling back clean air and clean water laws,” want to kill entitlements for seniors, and are focused on scoring political points rather than helping him solve problems; that only a handful of people are succeeding in this “you’re-on-your-own economy”; that he is for broadening the tax base; and that he fully intends to proceed with his agenda through executive and administrative orders in contravention of Congress and the Constitution.

You just can’t make this stuff up.

Obama Pleads for 4 More
By David Limbaugh

Instead of trying to govern, a matter about which I suppose we should be grateful, President Obama is once again galloping from fundraiser to fundraiser, straining to make the implausible case that the country needs his second term.

In New York for three events — in which he raked in $2 million from the very type of fat cats he daily condemns — he pleaded with voters (Reuters’ terminology, not mine) to be patient with him and to give him more time to fulfill his 2008 “hope and change” campaign promise.

He told supporters: “After all that is happening in Washington, it may be tempting to believe that change may not be as possible as we thought. It has been three wrenching years for this country.” I’ll say.

Well, I, for one, fault him not for failing to honor that promise, but for keeping it. We’ve had change, all right, and precisely the kind he had in mind. One can only imagine how much more change he would have effected if he’d had his way — if democracy, as he has complained, weren’t so “slow” and so “messy.” Worse still, let’s imagine how much more change he’d attempt if, God forbid, he were to purloin a second term.

His words to the friendly audiences confirm what attentive observers already understand about his remaining ambitions. He said: “Every single thing that we care about is at stake in this next election. It’s going to take more than a few years to meet the challenges that have been decades in the making.”

It would be one thing if Obama had been referring to the entitlement structure that the liberal establishment has imposed on Americans over the past half-century or more. But if entitlements were his concern, he wouldn’t be single-handedly obstructing their structural reform. No, he’s talking about the sluggish state of the economy, which absolutely wouldn’t take even two years — much less a decade — to turn around if he would remove his socialist boot from its gasping throat.

But we should note that Obama cleverly gets double mileage out of conveniently shifting the goal posts. Back in his messianic era, he wasn’t fecklessly cautioning that it would take a generation to bring about real change or to turn the economy around. He said that with his “stimulus” bill, unemployment would top out at 8 percent and that if he didn’t turn things around within his first term, the voters wouldn’t give him another chance.

But by rewriting history to erase those statements, he hopes to get a pass on his failure to produce in the time period he proposed, and he shiftily bolsters his case that his policies haven’t failed at all, that they only need more time to work, which they will unless reversed by hyper-partisan Republicans.

This may be doubly good for Obama, but it’s doubly bad for America. For if such sophistry abets his re-election, we will have lost any real chance to save the nation from financial bankruptcy, and he will have a mandate to make matters even worse — on a wide range of fronts.

What would Obama do in a second term? He told his fawning benefactors that he considers his achievements to be overhauling health care, ending the war in Iraq and fighting al-Qaida but that he needs another term to fully address the economy, the environment and other issues.

So he considers imposing cost-prohibitive, freedom-suppressing and quality-destroying nationalized health care against the people’s will his major achievement? His awkward withdrawal from Iraq and increasingly deteriorating relations there a close second? And “fighting al-Qaida” with most of the tools, save enhanced interrogation techniques, he slandered President George W. Bush for using?

But now he wants more time to “address the economy” and “the environment” — as if his approaches to those aren’t mutually exclusive and as if he has earned any good will or credibility on either.

As for the economy, the only thing Obama knows are the failed practices of spending yet more borrowed money, establishing incestuous government-business partnerships and raising taxes, all of which would accelerate our appointment with financial Armageddon. He insists on more Solyndras, just as the world is beginning to wise up to the horrors attendant to worshipping false green gods. (Europe is starting to bail on Kyoto.) He will not allow the private sector and the producers likeliest to resurrect it the freedom to breathe. If the economy were to rebound on his watch — first or second term — it would be despite his agenda.

Amazingly, Obama told his contributors that he tries not to pat himself “too much on the back” but that his “administration has done more for the security of … Israel than any previous administration.”

This is outright surreal, and so would be his second term.

A Quick Look at the GOP Field
By David Limbaugh

The GOP presidential nomination process is a roller-coaster ride — sometimes uplifting, other times discouraging, but we press forward.

President Obama and his agenda are unspeakably disastrous for the nation, so this election matters more than any in my lifetime. The national debt clock is ticking faster than Obama’s heart beats for big government, and his re-election would guarantee virtual national bankruptcy. That’s why the grass-roots tea party phenomenon sprouted, and it’s why there is so much scrutiny of the GOP candidates.

Every month or so, a new front-runner emerges in this volatile race. We’ve gone from Sarah Palin (in theory) to Donald Trump (for some, anyway) to Tim Pawlenty (sort of) to Michele Bachmann to Rick Perry to Herman Cain to Newt Gingrich, with Mitt Romney persistently vying with the “generic Republican” as the first choice of an unenthusiastic, default plurality. Throughout, some have hoped in vain that Palin, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie or Paul Ryan would agree to be drafted.

Conservatives began this election season fiercely determined to prevent the Republican Party from nominating another uninspiring, ideologically lukewarm candidate whose claim was based more on entitlement than merit. There would be no more Bob Doles or John McCains, whose centrism alone

would be disqualifying.
The conservative base wants to know it can rely on the nominee to have the character and courage to govern as a conservative, and that’s assuming he or she meets the essential threshold of electability.

At the dawn of the campaign, few thought Cain or Newt, for different reasons, would be serious contenders, but as it has unfolded, they both have exceeded expectations and have led the pack for an appreciable time. The same is true for Bachmann, though her star faded more rapidly than the others.

Perry’s trajectory has been exactly the opposite. He burst onto the scene as an immediate front-runner, with apparent credentials, charisma and a mostly conservative record. But his early debate performances were so substandard that he knocked himself out of serious contention almost as quickly as he’d gotten there.

When Cain captured the lead, a group of women surfaced, accusing him of sexual misconduct sufficiently troublesome to seriously damage any Republican — as opposed to Democratic — candidate. Because of the doubt cast on those allegations and Cain’s emphatic denials, they didn’t, on their own, sabotage his candidacy (though this latest one might). But when the accusations were coupled with concerns about Cain’s range of knowledge, mostly on foreign policy issues, his numbers began to fall sharply.

Newt’s surprising ascendancy is a function both of the disappointing field and his stellar debate performances, the latter being especially refreshing in view of Perry’s debate-related implosion. But concerns remain, not just about his so-called personal baggage but also about positions he’s taken and statements he’s made in the past, from global warming to health care. Romney is a man of mostly even temperament and few gaffes, and for a few years he has been saying mostly the “right” things. But his reputation as a flip-flopper, doubt about his true positions on social issues, and his stubborn refusal to denounce Romneycare inspire anxiety and distrust about whether in the end he would govern as a conservative.

Those of us who remain undecided are not making the perfect the enemy of the good. But we have to be sure that we nominate a candidate who not only could defeat Obama but also would take the dramatic steps necessary to reverse his agenda. Anything less might not be enough to rescue the republic from financial ruin.

The way I see the current field, Rick Santorum and Bachmann could be trusted to govern as consistent, bold conservatives with the courage, convictions and competence to roll back Obama’s assault. But at this point, neither seems to be able to garner enough support to make it above the second tier. Whether they would be electable against Obama is moot if they can’t generate more support from their own party.

Cain is also a reliable conservative with an impressive record as a competent and innovative businessman with strong leadership skills. But many remain concerned about his depth of knowledge on the issues, as well as yet more women-related allegations. Perry seems to be mostly conservative, with exceptions, and has a record as an effective executive in Texas. But many now fear that his debate performances either are indicative of greater intellectual weaknesses or would severely impair his electability against Obama.

So we have a few fine candidates who are getting no traction, a few who are strong conservatives with perceived substantive weaknesses, and a few who are overflowing with competency and ideas but who generate grave doubts as to whether they would govern as conservatively as they’ve campaigned. Despite the rigorous vetting, there is more to come, but no matter how many further weaknesses they expose, I will enthusiastically support the last GOP man or woman standing.

Even Obama’s Cheerleaders Are Falling Away
By David Limbaugh

President Obama’s cheerleaders are starting to peel away along with his approval ratings, and it’s a fascinating sight to behold. They offer different reasons, but they all boil down to one obvious thing — Obama is first and foremost about Obama — and one less obvious: He has been a failed president.

Democratic pollsters Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen, admittedly more centrist than most of their Democratic counterparts, penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal urging Obama “to abandon his candidacy for re-election.” The authors conclude that the only way Obama could possibly win in 2012 would be “to wage the most negative campaign in history,” because he has no successful record to run on. If he would happen to win in that way, he wouldn’t be able to govern, they say, so he should step aside and allow Hillary Clinton to run.

Their main beef with Obama seems to be his extreme partisanship, which is a particularly damning indictment coming from fellow Democrats. Should he resign, they argue, he would be in a better position to work with Republicans toward “a more constructive dialogue about our nation’s future” instead of obsessing over whether he or George W. Bush is more to blame for our problems.

I don’t agree that Obama would be any easier to work with if he were to withdraw from the race, but it is significant that two credible Democrats, both still loyal to their party, concede that Obama is hyper-partisan and hopelessly mired in the quicksand of scapegoating his predecessor.

Even more interesting was the viral video of Chris Matthews explaining to fellow MSNBC host Alex Witt why his Obama-thrill is gone. This represents quite a fall from Matthews’ previous perch of Obama hero worship.

Matthews clearly believes that Obama peaked about the time his campaign ended and his term in office began, because “the day he was inaugurated, with the Mall filled with people, African-Americans and everyone else, he sent us all home and said, ‘Thank you. Now watch how smart I am.’ That’s the worst kind of a notion of the presidency.”

Matthews is also upset that Obama is running a “virtual presidency,” through endless impersonal emails, rather than building and exploiting the interpersonal relationships that are vital for effective governance. On that score, he laments: “I hear stories (from members of Congress) that you will not believe. Not a single phone call since the last election.”

Matthews is an incorrigible idealist, with a romanticized notion of politics, longing to relive his childhood conception of statecraft as a Camelot Neverland. He is livid at Obama for giving him a political fix with all that grandiose “Yes, we can” rhetoric and then removing it like a sadistic parole officer as soon as he was inaugurated.

Matthews wants a leader, not just to provide that fix but also to follow it up with a vision and policies to realize the vision. But here’s what’s revealing: Matthews excoriates Obama for failing to say “one thing about what he’d do in the second term. He never tells” us his plan for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the tax system or the long-term debt.

I think Matthews is disillusioned with Obama on two levels. First, he feels betrayed that Obama the person is so different from Obama the pseudo-messiah he calculatingly portrayed himself to be during the campaign. He’s ultimately about himself; he’s all hat and no cattle — something many of us knew years ago. He doesn’t share Matthews’ idealism about politics, and he is an abject fraud for pretending to.

Second, whether or not he fully realizes it or its implications, Matthews is frustrated that Obama, the apparently quintessential liberal, hasn’t been able, through their shared ideology, to produce prosperity and world peace.

There is a disconnect at work here with Matthews’ anger at Obama for doing precisely what liberals do. Obama shoved through a radically liberal agenda — the kind that should earn him permanent gratitude from a liberal such as Matthews, and it has led to economic catastrophe. Matthews, at least in part, is furious at Obama, perhaps subconsciously, for proving that Matthews’ lifelong ideology is an epic fail.

But in fairness, Matthews is also rightly disgusted with Obama for refusing to provide leadership or show even a modicum of willingness to work in good faith to extricate us from these horrendous economic, entitlement and debt problems, which, maddeningly, are occurring on a liberal president’s watch.

Matthews pleads: “Just tell us, Commander. Give us our orders, and tell us where we’re going. Give us the mission. And he hasn’t done it.”

I feel your pain, Chris, but we tried to warn you.

So-Called Electability and MSM Bias
By David Limbaugh

It is open season for the liberal media on any GOP presidential candidate who displays the audacity to surge in the polls, the latest targets being Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich. A reasonable case can be made for some of these criticisms, and conservatives often concede the weaknesses, but there is no justification for this same media’s ongoing cover-up for the current White House occupant.

Can you imagine how differently our political climate would be if the mainstream media had the slightest inclination toward fairness and balance? The liberal media have never, to my knowledge, shined the spotlight on Obama’s many embarrassing gaffes. They have rarely called attention to his deceit, broken promises and policy failures.

Part of the reason is their presupposition that because he’s a credentialed left-winger, he is brilliant, and any departure from that is a mere aberration, an exception that couldn’t possibly detract from his presumptive brilliance. And as a bona fide “progressive,” he is imbued with superior moral standards, and his misdeeds must be excused in exchange for his dedication to policies the liberal media deem are ethically unassailable.

From the mainstream media’s perspective, conservatives, on the other hand, are presumptively dimwitted or morally bankrupt, because you can’t be intelligent and conservative unless you’re morally depraved. Ronald Reagan was an amiable dunce, despite his unparalleled ability to communicate; Dan Quayle was irredeemably simple because he misspelled “potato.” George W. Bush was too stupid to tie his shoes (but inexplicably cunning enough to con erudite liberal congressmen into supporting him in his devious plot to depose Saddam Hussein).

GOP candidates magically become less competent or more corrupt the instant they show any signs of electability. Meanwhile, the MSM continue to ignore, defend and lie about Obama’s abundant gaffes, policy failures, deceptions, divisiveness and extremism.

Think how different our discussions of electability would be if the liberal media were to:

–Dan-Quayle Obama for his “57 states” and Navy “corpse-man” gaffes.

–Play a video loop of his brain freezes and verbal stutter-steps.

–Showcase his shoutout to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow during what was expected to be a solemn expression of sorrow for the victims of the Fort Hood murderer.

–Air a montage of his bellicose attacks against Republicans, followed by clips in which he bitterly complained of their partisanship.

–Remind him of his immodest pledge to be a post-racial president while having ushered in an acutely race-conscious climate.

–Call him out for wasting $868 billion on a “stimulus” that Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf admitted would have “a net negative effect on the growth of GDP over 10 years.”

–Refuse to ignore his cynical admission that he hadn’t been altogether honest in claiming there were abundant “shovel-ready” jobs waiting in the wings.

–Point out that he promised to improve America’s international image but has turned out to be even less popular in the Muslim world than President George W. Bush and has repeatedly offended our allies and their leaders, the most recent being Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

–Highlight that Obama expressed solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, many of whom have been arrested for criminality, but demonized law-abiding tea partyers.

–Challenge Obama on his disingenuous commitment to make abortion “safe, legal and rare” while his administration has actively promoted the proliferation of abortion domestically, through its unswerving support for Planned Parenthood and its 900 abortions per day and through its taxpayer-funded lobbying for pro-abortion policies in Kenya and other nations.

–Report that Obama crammed through Obamacare on the false representation, aided by fraudulent accounting, that it would bend the health care cost curve down, even though it actually will greatly increase costs.

–Provide even the most rudimentary scrutiny of the twin scandals of Solyndra — and its many green cousins — and “Fast and Furious.”

–Tell even part of the sordid tale of Obama’s symbiotic relationship with ACORN and the Service Employees International Union.

–Ask Obama how he can be so high and mighty in condemning enhanced interrogation techniques on moral grounds despite knowing that with the implementation of those techniques in just three instances, many American lives were actually saved.

–Press him to explain his shaming Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic primary race for proposing a health care insurance mandate and then brazenly making such a mandate a foundational component of Obamacare.

–Underscore his phony, though tepid and “evolving,” opposition to same-sex marriage while he unleashes a full-frontal assault on traditional marriage through his extraconstitutional refusal to enforce it in court and his active effort to repeal it legislatively.

I speak of an imaginary world, but imagining it should serve to illustrate the extent to which the liberal media conspire to perpetuate a lingering illusion, to the immeasurable detriment of the nation.

Obama and Occupy Wall Street Are One
By David Limbaugh

President Obama acts as though he merely sympathizes with the Wall Street occupiers’ “broad-based frustration” about how America’s financial system works, but he’s doing a lot more than sympathizing. He’s fanning their flames.

Perhaps we should take a look at what, exactly, Obama is supporting and contrast it with the tea party movement he so roundly condemns.

In May 2010, when a White House dinner guest suggested to Obama that racism was a motivating force behind the tea party opposition to him, he raised nary a finger of objection and even affirmed that there was a racially biased “subterranean agenda” afoot in the anti-Obama movement. About that same time, the administration had lumped the tea party protesters into a group to be monitored as “domestic terrorists.”

Ever since this authentic, grass-roots movement spontaneously erupted throughout the nation, Obama and the leftist establishment have engaged in a systematic effort to demonize and discredit tea party protesters as extremist, racist and violent. Nancy Pelosi predicted the protests would lead to a climate of violence. In a recent interview, Obama portrayed tea party ideas as extreme positions that are rejected by “a vast majority of Americans.”

Those of us who identify with the movement and have attended some of the rallies know that in their false characterizations, Obama and his supporters are either lying or projecting. The protests have been remarkably peaceful, respectful and lawful. We are talking about Americana here, folks — people who believe in American ideals and who object to the government’s bankrupting us and destroying our liberties.

There has been no tea party-instigated violence at these rallies, and there has been no racism. Bearing false witness is egregious; doing so in exploitation of the race issue is worse.

Why do we believe that in defaming tea partyers, Obama is projecting? Simply because he is a community organizer at heart with an ends-justify-the-means ethic. He has been engaged in political street agitation his entire adult life, so it is natural for him to assume his political opponents would engage in the same tactics. But they don’t.

We see in the Occupy Wall Street protests — and some of the Service Employees International Union protests that have preceded it — the attitudes and atmosphere that prevail among leftist activists, whose aimless angst is directed at everyone but those most responsible for causing the damage they are decrying: their fellow leftists.

For a bird’s-eye view of the type of protest Obama and his fellow leftists pretended to fear in the tea party events, we need look no further than the Wall Street occupier dust-ups. Here hateful and violent rhetoric abound, just as the ugly specter of racism, particularly against Jews, is in full relief, all of which are as verifiable in the YouTube videos of these protests as their absence has been in the tea party videos.

On her blog, Michelle Malkin cites a Denver protester saying, “There’s a lot of stuff that needs to change, and it if doesn’t, violent revolution will come.”

He continues, “If you get the thirteen families that own the world, including George Bush and his administration, get them in front of the White House and hang them and shoot them, because they deserve that.” And if that doesn’t impress you, how about the protesters “calling for the beheading of ‘white kids,’ the ‘hanging’ of capitalists, and the murder of parents,” as reported by the blog “Pundit Press”?

This, my friends, is representative of the type of protest our community organizer in chief claims to be “monitoring” and nevertheless supports — the type that has led to more than 750 arrests throughout the country, compared with only one arrest in all the tea party protests.

Hindsight vindicates our early assurances that the tea party protests were not going to lead to violence because they were populated by people who honor the rule of law. Indeed, the tea partyers’ lawful behavior is an outworking of their substantive ideals, just as the occupiers’ lawlessness is reflective of their underlying anarchy. The former respect proper constitutional restraints; the latter more closely resemble a mob.

With Obama, it’s all smoke and mirrors; nothing is as he would have you believe. Every negative thing he says about the tea partyers is false, including that they don’t represent the sentiment of the American majority, which is bursting with outrage at Obama’s reckless agenda.

And whereas he pretended to fear violence from the tea partyers, he is actually trying to foment unrest among the occupiers. Their lifeblood is class warfare, and he is stoking its flames every single day.

With no ideas left on his plate that a long suffering American public is willing to further indulge, much less embrace, Obama is reduced to what he knows best: stirring public discontentment and unrest, hoping that this will somehow serve his political interests.

Obama’s Rehabilitation Tour, or ‘I Promise I’m a Leftist’
By David Limbaugh

Poor President Obama. His leftist backers have momentarily fallen out of love with him for not destroying the country fast enough. Obama must ask himself, “What would Hugo Chavez do?”

Obama decided to embark on a personal rehabilitation tour. He first stopped by the annual awards dinner of the Congressional Black Caucus and told blacks to “stop complainin’. Stop grumblin’. Stop cryin’.” Don’t they realize that it’s the Republicans’ fault that black unemployment is nearly double the national average, at 16.7 percent? “So many people in (Washington) are fighting us every step of the way.”

Instead of berating them, Obama ought to count his lucky stars that he’s not taking more grief. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver said that if Bill Clinton were in the White House and didn’t address the problem of black unemployment, blacks “probably would be marching on the White House.”

Obama’s malcontent leftist friends on the Leftist Coast agree that he has not been liberal enough. So to regain their favor, he jetted out West in that covered wagon known as Air Force One and pleaded with them to understand the predicament he is in with nasty Republicans opposing him every step of the way. He is, he assured them, as radical as they are.

In Seattle, representing the downtrodden, Obama told the 65 guests who were paying a paltry $35,800 per couple, “From the moment I took office, what we’ve seen is a constant ideological push-back against any kind of sensible reforms that would make our economy work better and give people more opportunity.”

The bipartisan Obama told his fellow warriors for the poor that the Republican alternative “is an approach to government that will fundamentally cripple America in meeting the challenges of the 21st century.”

That’s the ticket. Unless we agree to Obama’s spending $450 billion more in borrowed money on the grounds that increasing the national debt will decrease the national debt, we will be crippling America. If we demand fiscal responsibility, we simply cannot be trusted to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Obama’s birdbrained policies are so exasperatingly ridiculous he’s lucky no one is invoking the 25th Amendment to challenge his mental capacity to serve.

Though it would never happen, it’s time for Obama to go further and really tell the whole truth. Even if he believes, against all evidence and reason, that the government can improve the economy by sucking all remaining oxygen out of the private sector, that’s not the only reason he is pushing for another reckless stimulus package.

Obama doesn’t care about infrastructure or improving the disastrous unemployment numbers he’s fueling. These are not what float his Marxist boat. Stimulus Jr. isn’t about creating more economic demand, which it wouldn’t do anyway. Like Stimulus Sr., it’s about pressing forward with his nefarious scheme to restructure America in his image.

It would be bad enough if these boondoggles were just grab bags of political payoffs, money laundering, redistribution and colossal waste. But they’re also designed to create more government programs that will self-perpetuate.

Through Stimulus Jr., Obama would create a massive new bureaucracy to administer the nightmare — a bureaucracy that would not wither away when the program is completed, any more than Marx’s government would wither away after the “dictatorship of the proletariat.”

Why is it so hard for some people to grasp that neither government tax and regulatory roadblocks against economic growth nor massive wealth redistribution programs improve the plight of lower- and middle-income groups? When will a greater percentage of blacks realize that liberal prescriptions harm rather than improve their economic conditions? When will they realize they are being exploited and injured by the very leaders who say they are the only ones who care about them?

These demagogues had better hope minorities and lower- and middle-income groups never systematically study the damning results of their policies. Obama scapegoats Republican obstruction for the failure of his policies, but no matter how hard he dissembles, he had his way the first two years of his term.

Nevertheless, he persists. On the next stop on his propaganda tour, Obama told his audience that the 2012 election will be even more important than the one in 2008. It will be “a contest of values.”

Finally, there’s something we can all agree on. It will indeed be a contest of values. Unfortunately for Obama, recent polls show that essentially half the American people fear his beloved federal government.

So let’s get ready to rumble.

Obama’s Hope and Change Promise Reconsidered
By David Limbaugh

When Obama promised “hope and change” as a candidate, I think he had in mind a new paradigm, one of restructuring America’s economic system in his image rather than triggering economic growth, though he wanted the electorate to believe that growth was his focus.

The economy had turned south by the time Obama was trumpeting that platitude, but that was largely caused by liberal affordable housing policies — the very type of program Obama would promote in office.

The dismal state of the economy played into Obama’s hands, but I dare say he would have pushed for hope and change regardless of economic conditions, because he was offering more than economic solutions. He presented himself as the whole package — a quasi-deity who would transform the entire country, slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet.

With a backdrop of spiritually bankrupt people who were ripe for the lie that government could fill that god-shaped void in their beings, Obama strategically milked his messianic mirage. He constructed Greek columns, produced ethereal voice echo effects and adopted a conspicuous head-lift affectation to build a cultlike following that even ensnared a number of frighteningly credulous self-styled conservatives, such as New York Times columnist David Brooks.

How has Obama done if we measure his promise of hope and change in purely economic terms? Well, despite his tired efforts to scapegoat former President George W. Bush and the global markets, this is his economy, and it is demonstrably worse in every imaginable category. He has given us change, but it is destructive change. He has given us hope, but it is hope that the nightmare he has engineered will soon be over.

But what if, instead, we gauge Obama’s promise in broader terms? It’s more apparent every day that he was not talking about improving the economic misery index when he promised hope and change — though he certainly exploited the recession that serendipitously coincided with his campaign to imply that he was.

To be properly interpreted, the phrase has to be considered along with his pledge to fundamentally change America and his frequent allusions to “spreading the wealth around.” He had in mind changing the “social contract” between America and its people.

Just look at the recent viral video of Elizabeth Warren, his former financial reform adviser, who essentially tells us that America’s economic winners have been successful on the backs of the poor. Part of the “social contract,” says Warren, is to “take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” Can you hear echoes of Obama’s “spread the wealth around” here?

Like Obama, Warren doesn’t believe capitalism is a fair or moral system. Nor is Warren an isolated example. Nearly every one of Obama’s czars shares this Marxist mindset.

Most socialists are not about economic prosperity. Oh, they’ll use Keynesian theory that deficit spending stimulates economic growth to justify their demand for more government expenditures. But in the end, Obama’s “stimulus” package wasn’t even fair to John Maynard Keynes.

Don’t get me wrong; the obscene forced federal expenditures wouldn’t have succeeded in stimulating the economy even if Obama had used them for that purpose. But he didn’t, and it is pretty hard to deny in hindsight that he never intended to.

Before he commandeered the $868 billion, he assured us it would go to shovel-ready jobs and get people back to work again. It was only after the fact that he cynically laughed in our faces about the unavailability of such jobs. (He’s doing the same thing all over again with his latest jobs bill.)

Despite his promise that he would strictly account for this money and watchdog against its waste, he threw gobs of it away to locations with phantom ZIP codes, to ACORN-like political allies, to unions and to corrupt environmental wastelands, such as Solyndra.

There was no private-sector economic multiplier effect for any of Obama’s stimulus expenditures. The only multiplier effect in this and his other spending bills was in the public sector. Obama furtively tucked into these bills many perpetually sustaining federal programs that would remain with us, continue to grow and further choke the private sector.

Thus, if you measure Obama’s promise of hope and change against his true intention, he might well be succeeding. As one who believes that America’s free market is unfair, he has gone a long way toward shaking up that structure — and he’s not even close to being finished. He has taken from the producers and redistributed to those his administration deems worthy of the transfer payments.

Obama may not be deliberately destroying the U.S. economy, but he is implementing policies that are allowing the central planners to pick the winners and losers and, in the process, smothering the private sector and wrecking our fiscal future.

There Is Just No Satisfying Liberals
By David Limbaugh

What is 2011 if not a dramatic global outworking of the abysmal failures of liberalism? Their failures are everywhere, but liberals are no closer to abandoning their political theology than they were, say, five years ago.

Every marginally intelligent person must know that events unfolding in Britain are a likely foreshadowing of what’s in store for us if we don’t radically alter our ways. Unchastened and undaunted, liberals keep their collective foot on the big-government accelerator. There’s no governor on the liberal golf cart.

For years, the more responsible among us have been warning about spending and unsustainable entitlements, and the left has mocked. But this past year, it’s as if God has been trying, with increasingly urgent alarms, to get our attention, to no avail.

Tea partyers tried to hold the line during the debates of the continuing resolutions and debt ceiling, only to be vilified. But the national debt continues to explode as if to resoundingly validate conservatives as reasonable and their spending-addicted opponents as extremists. For liberals, too much government is never enough.

We were told that unless we lifted the debt ceiling, our credit rating would be downgraded and the markets would collapse. Most Republicans signed on to the deal under duress, which ended up neither preventing nor delaying the downgrade or the market free fall. But that was no problem for liberals, who simply changed their warnings after the fact, now saying it was the wrangling over the ceiling, not the underlying debt, that was responsible. Liberals are not to be held to account for what they said yesterday.

In a move ostensibly aimed at containing the plummeting market, Obama bounced out once again to his trusted prompter. But instead of acknowledging his culpability for the unfolding national nightmare — for which he, at the very least, is blocking remedial action — he wagged his skinny finger of blame, saying it is everyone’s fault but his. Being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry.

Meanwhile, we got another stern jolt of reality from across the pond as one of Europe’s primary poster nations for the grand socialist experiment implodes into abject violence before our eyes. We witnessed the very beneficiaries of government largesse exhibiting their gratitude as they stole from an already beaten and bloodied man and forced people to strip naked to prove they’d not withheld any assets.

It was unnecessary to speculate as to the causes of this unrest. Audiotapes of the inebriated women justifying the despicable behavior on the basis of income inequality told us all we needed to know.

But British liberals are as impervious to proof as their American counterparts. A video linked on National Review Online featured a British Labour Party liberal condemning the protesters’ violence through one cheek and sympathizing with their plight on the other, thereby further excusing and enabling their behavior. Her party injected the addict with addictive substances yet castigates conservatives who call for an intervention.

There is just no satisfying liberals. No amount of money thrown at a project can ever be enough, because you can’t solve problems by throwing money at them, especially when that money comes with federal demands attached and leads to diminished local control. They’ll always demand more — even when we are wholly bankrupt. Always. No exceptions.

Indeed, if there were ever a test case to see whether exceptions exist, whether there are some limits to the rapacious liberal appetite for spending, our current debt picture and economic malaise provide it. But they won’t even countenance the thought of counseling, much less patient rehab.

Like their addicted wards, liberals remain in perpetual denial, continually giving themselves a pass for their disastrous policies because of their allegedly good intentions. But how noble is it to stoke the dark human passions of greed, jealousy, envy and covetousness? How commendable is it to foment resentment among the races, genders and different income groups? How virtuous is it to promote policies that rarely, if ever, live up to their promises?

Should we lavish praise on President Obama for his simulated compassion when his press secretary, Jay Carney, insists that extending unemployment benefits creates jobs, willfully ignoring both common sense and empirical evidence, which contradict the claim? Must we laud Obama for his unrelenting demands for more “stimuli” that not only don’t work but also will further impoverish us and our posterity?

It must be easy to be a liberal. When your policies don’t work, you just change the goal posts and say we haven’t done enough — and then demand more.

Honestly, close your eyes and try to imagine a scenario in which liberals would ever say that enough money has been spent, enough federal government power exerted. You will fail — because there is just no satisfying liberals.

Obama May Be Slowly Isolating Himself
By David Limbaugh

In the ongoing budget negotiations, it is becoming quite clear that President Obama, quite contrary to his posturing, is the major fly in the ointment.

Even the Democratic leadership is more flexible than President Obama, putting the lie to the oft-stated speculation that Obama is a mere puppet. He is his own counsel.

It was reported that on Sunday night, he unilaterally rejected a bipartisan deal presented to him by Senate and House leaders. “Sen. (Harry) Reid took the bipartisan plan to the White House, and the president said no,” an aide said.

This is quite a different picture from what President Obama has been painting for the press. At the exact moment he said he didn’t want to point fingers, he complained that he and his Democrats had been willing to compromise but that Republicans were dug into their ideological cement.

He said, “And I think one of the questions that the Republican Party is going to have to ask itself is, Can they say yes to anything?” Are you kidding me? This is the guy who still hasn’t presented his own plan and obstructs all others not conforming to his unreasonable demands.

Though later reports indicate Reid may be caving to Obama’s demands, this question remains: Why is Obama even willing to pit himself against his own party?

Well, he’d have us belief that he alone is standing up for the will and interests of the American people. He must think we forgot how he crammed Obamacare down our throats. A strong majority still wants it repealed.

In a recent news conference, he fraudulently claimed that 80 percent of Americans want tax increases to be included in a deal and that he would reject any deal that did not include a tax increase for the “wealthiest Americans.” But Rasmussen Reports indicates that 55 percent of Americans do not want tax increases as part of the deal. A CNN poll finds that 66 percent support “cut, cap and balance,” and 74 percent support a balanced budget amendment, both of which Obama steadfastly opposes.

Obama’s intransigence is based on his ideology and raw political calculations. Obama can’t bring himself to forgo his tax hikes, even during a recession, or to embrace structural entitlement reform, because these things would offend every redistributionist molecule in his body.

So while Obama says the Republicans won’t bend, it is he who has not shown any willingness to move on taxes or entitlements. But those aren’t the only issues on which he’s set in stone. He has now become just as inflexible in resisting any short-term deal. He has said he will not sign a deal that does not raise the debt ceiling enough ($2.4 trillion) to get him past the 2012 election. Obviously, he doesn’t want this nagging, inconvenient debt issue and wrangling with Congress to diminish his re-election prospects. Ever the statesman, he is placing his political fortunes above the interests of the nation.

In all honesty, I’m not convinced that Obama is particularly worried about the debt even today. He seems more concerned with high-speed rail, new “green” projects and other programs he and fellow statists believe are good for the people — even if they don’t.

During the Friday presser, he gave a shout-out to his like-minded progressives, telling them they should join him in getting the fiscal house in order because it would allow them to focus on their federal goody bag, “like infrastructure, like rebuilding our roads and our bridges (and) airports, like investing more in college education, like making sure that we’re focused on the kinds of research and technology that’s going to help us win the future.”

In Obama’s world, everything centers on the government, not the private sector. It was telling that in his presser, he didn’t mention private-sector unemployed, only the government workers who would lose their jobs if the debt ceiling is not increased.

I was initially opposed to a short-term deal, because I thought it would be just another device to kick the can down the road and defer real spending and entitlement reform. But it is clear that given his mindset, this president cannot be entrusted with an increase in the debt ceiling that would empower him to ignore further fiscal reform until after the election.

While we fret over spooking the markets each time a budget deadline approaches, a short-term deal would keep these issues on the front burner until the election, where they need to be. It would keep the ruling class on the hot seat and enforce some degree of discipline.

Through his unreasonableness and dogmatism, Obama has isolated himself and is trying to bully Congress into having everything his way. He is holding the budget deal hostage to his redistributionist demands and his perceived political interests — anything but addressing the existential threat facing this nation. Pray the congressional leadership can continue to keep the heat on instead of throwing him more rope to fiscally strangle the nation.

Time for GOP To Implement Full-Frontal Budget Assault
By David Limbaugh

My advice for the GOP: No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more putting the pretense of civility above the best interests of the nation. Democrats are playing cynical games with our national debt crisis, and it’s time they were called out on them — directly, volubly and repeatedly. Senate Democrats haven?t passed their own budget plan in more than two years, despite having strong control of that body. Meanwhile, the nation is teetering on bankruptcy.

I don’t make that statement lightly. Our national debt is $14.3 trillion, and our federal deficit is $1.65 trillion. This might be less shocking but for the facts that our projected annual deficits as long as Obama is in charge average $1 trillion, and our unfunded entitlements exceed $88 trillion.

Just yesterday I read two shocking articles comparing the debt picture of the United States to that of Greece. The mere thought that our situations are remotely comparable should send us into anxiety attacks.

In one of those articles, Michael Tanner, in National Review Online, asks, ‘Which country is in worse fiscal condition — Greece or the United States?’ Brace yourselves. This year, says Tanner, Greece’s budget deficit will be 9.5 percent of its gross domestic product. (Last year, it was 15 percent.) Its national debt will exceed 150 percent of GDP by year’s end. When you factor in its future unfunded pension liabilities, its debt exceeds 875 percent of GDP, meaning that the debt is almost nine times greater than the value of the nation?s total annual economic production. Wow.

Surely the United States doesn?t even approach such frightening levels. After all, aren’t these allusions to Greece just the stuff of fear-mongers like that outrageous meanie Paul Ryan? Well, let’s take a look.

This year, our deficit is estimated to be 10.8 percent of GDP — 1.3 percent higher than that of Greece. Our national debt, as mentioned above, is $14.3 trillion, which is not quite 100 percent of our GDP — just 98 percent. So in this category, Greece ‘beats’ us, though by 2020, we are scheduled to reach those Greek levels. More significantly, when you include our unfunded entitlement liabilities, which exceed 900 percent of our GDP, we put Greece to shame again. Hurray!

Greece does edge us out on annual spending relative to GDP. It spends more than half its GDP, while our combined federal, state and local spending runs between 35 and 40 percent of GDP. Before you get depressed that Greece beats us in this category, be aware that once our entitlement programs ‘really kick in’, federal spending will soar to more than 43 percent of GDP. When you add state and local spending, we?ll be approaching 60 percent of GDP, again dwarfing the debt-pretender Greece. And wait until the new Obamacare entitlement is fully operative.

Don’t let your eyes glaze over these numbers. Just understand that we are in staggeringly desperate financial straits, which will inevitably bankrupt us if we don’t implement reform — and soon. Our funded liabilities are growing by more than $10 trillion a year.

But Democrats are steadfastly refusing to tackle the problem. While physical and fiscal tornadoes create their wide path of destruction, President Obama, Harry Reid and the rest of the Democratic leadership have decided to attack Paul Ryan and the GOP with fear tactics and lies, offering nothing credible of their own to address either the short-term problems or the long-term ones.

While the Democrats’ main line of attack is the fraudulent claim that Ryan is destroying Medicare, their own ideas actually do directly assault Medicare, which will only be ’saved’ by rationing. But the truth is that Medicare simply cannot be salvaged in any meaningful form without major restructuring such as Ryan has proposed.

Democrats are smugly savoring what they claim as a victory in NY-26, because they employed their demagogic attacks on Medicare in that race. Senate Democrats, instead of offering their own plan, tried to put Republicans on the defensive by forcing a vote on the Ryan budget, which went down to a 57-40 defeat. When Republicans tried to flush Senate Dems out to vote on Obama?s plan, a procedural vote to move forward on it failed 97-0, while Obama sipped wine in Europe. These people aren’t serious. The only semblance of a plan they?ve forwarded involves tax increases and rationing by a board of robotic, heartless bureaucrats. Tanner, like so many sensible others, reminds us that we can?t tax ourselves out of this problem. Greece tried it.

Republicans will make a mistake if they continue to be in counterattack mode, waiting for the latest Democratic broadside to respond. They should be on the airwaves every morning and every night presenting the nightmarish facts and their proposal to end the nightmare and exposing the Democrats for the reckless rogues they are. Time’s running out.

Don’t Let Liberal Establishment Choose Our Candidates
By David Limbaugh

Conservatives are worried that an ideal Reagan conservative has yet to emerge and lead the 2012 GOP presidential field. But are we allowing the liberal media (and establishment Republicans) to manipulate the narrative to prevent such a result?

Obviously, the liberal media do not have the best interests of Reagan conservatives in mind when they do their “reporting.” So when they tell us certain GOP candidates are unelectable or electable, common sense would counsel us to take their advice with mounds of salt. But do we?

Surely Ronald Reagan isn’t the only qualified, electable Reagan conservative in our lifetimes. Nonetheless, the virtually unchallenged assumption is that Reagan conservatism is extreme and its purveyors intrinsically divisive.

The demonization always follows the same pattern. A promising mainstream conservative candidate appears and begins to gain traction and is then relentlessly attacked and marginalized into apparent unelectablility.

Compare the media’s treatment of Mitt Romney with their treatment of John McCain in the 2008 Republican primary campaign. We don’t need to debate here whether Romney is a Reagan conservative; all that matters for purposes of this discussion is that the liberal media thought he was — or enough so that he had to be stopped. McCain, on the other hand, had been their darling for years for his high-profile counter-conservative stances and his penchant for administering friendly fire on his GOP colleagues. It wasn’t until the general election that they turned on McCain.

More recently, we see the same phenomenon with this year’s slate of potential candidates. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are strong, unapologetic conservatives, qualifying as conservatives on all three legs of Reagan’s three-legged stool: economic, social and foreign policy issues.

They have both been savaged as inexperienced, extremist, divisive lightweights. But the media never cast Barack Obama’s inexperience in a negative light. They conserved their ammo for use solely against Palin, who wasn’t even running for the main spot on the ticket and who had far more executive experience than Obama.

The media portrayed Obama as a uniter, despite his having had the most liberal voting record in the Senate in 2007. And they haven’t properly acknowledged the extent of his divisiveness yet, though he’s the most polarizing president of the modern era — including George W. Bush.

This year, the establishment had been propping up Mitch Daniels, probably because it didn’t view him as being as conservative as Palin, Bachmann, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain or Tim Pawlenty. Now that Daniels is out, we hear that those in the establishment will start talking up John Huntsman — doubtlessly because they see him as less conservative and thus less threatening.

Nor is the media’s anti-conservative vitriol reserved exclusively for announced presidential candidates. On “Meet the Press,” David Gregory ambushed Paul Ryan for his plan to “cut” Medicare when polls allegedly show that people incoherently oppose cuts even if the failure to impose substantial cuts would bankrupt the country. In a display of smugness I’ve not witnessed since Obama told Sen. McCain “I won, John,” Gregory sneeringly lectured Ryan on his audacity in promoting his plan without having a national “consensus” in favor of it.

Hold on for a second. I researched Nexis and Google and couldn’t find a scintilla of evidence of Gregory’s indignation against Obama for shoving Obamacare through without a consensus. So the rule is: Vilify the conservative for pushing a plan and simultaneously engaging in a national dialogue aimed at developing a national consensus, and glorify the liberal for lying, cheating and stealing to cram a bill through with an overwhelming majority of opposition, let alone without a consensus.

But in the end, it’s not the liberal bias, double standards, selective demonization and unfairness that troubles me most. It is what I fear to be our side’s passive acquiescence to the media’s predictable narrative. Why do we keep allowing our political enemies to pick and disqualify our candidates?

Professional politicians have steered our ship of state into the Titanic iceberg. It’s hardly facetious to suggest that there’s an inverse relationship between the collective experience of those in the political class and their ability and willingness to extricate us from the mess they’ve created.

We need fresh blood and a fresh approach to the nation-threatening problems we face, so perhaps we should liberate ourselves from the template preventing us from stepping outside the box.

I haven’t decided whom I will support for the GOP nomination this early in the field. I like Palin, Cain, Ryan, Rick Perry, Santorum, Pawlenty, John Bolton and Bachmann, among others. But I sure won’t let the liberal media or establishment types color my thinking about it.

Let’s try to resist the debilitating contagion of pessimism out there. Contrary to conventional wisdom, there are plenty of good candidates, and all of them are infinitely superior to Obama. If the nation is to be saved, one of them, on this list or not, has to prevail.

Obama and Democrats, Not Republicans, Need to Answer for Debt Ceiling
By David Limbaugh

What kind of surreal world are we inhabiting where the political party that is trying to address our debt problem is on the defensive at the hands of the reckless party that chooses to mock, demagogue and delay?

The national dialogue, at least the one being choreographed by Democrats and their amen chorus in the liberal Beltway media, has been distorted beyond measure. We are asking the wrong questions and getting the wrong answers.

Let’s focus on the real problem. We are in a national debt crisis — present tense; this is not something that might occur in the future. Medicare and Social Security trustees just issued the grim report that Medicare’s fiscal hole has deepened by an additional $2 trillion and its projected date of insolvency has been moved up five more years to 2024. Social Security was already $49 billion in the red last year, and its projected insolvency date has been advanced to 2036.

Meanwhile, S&P lowered America’s long-term credit rating from “stable” to “negative,” and CNN Money warned that this means there’s a one in three chance that S&P will downgrade our AAA credit rating within two years. Also, Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund with $1.2 trillion in assets, has already sold off all of its U.S. government holdings.

So, the media shouldn’t be asking the Republicans whether they intend to play brinksmanship with the debt ceiling, suggesting that if they refuse to raise the limit again they’ll cause the United States to default on its obligations and plunge into a financial catastrophe.

Instead, they should be cornering their most favored president and his Democrats and asking them why they are AWOL on our debt crisis. They should demand an answer on why they didn’t produce a budget in 2010 despite having control of both houses of Congress, an egregious act of neglect that hasn’t occurred in a couple of generations.

Obama and the Democrats should be asked why they continue to perpetuate the myth that Republicans are going to force a default on our national obligations if they don’t agree to raise the debt ceiling. Democrats know the government won’t default on its obligations because the interest on the debt represents but a small fraction of the budget. It is other expenditures that will have to be delayed — something that’s unthinkable to these rapacious spenders.

But since the liberal press is not going to do its job, the Republicans and the alternative media need to do it, with considerable frequency and volume. Obama and his Democrats need to be placed on the defensive. They are the primary drivers of this spending; they are the obstructers of entitlement reform, and the national debt continues to burn while they fiddle.

We need to dispense a little of their own medicine to them and turn the PR tide against them. Behind their aggressive accusations against Republicans, beneath the veneer of their fear mongering, lurks a sordid absence of engagement on the major issue facing us today.

We need to ask them, “Why do you refuse to join Republicans in serious and concrete spending cuts and entitlement reform (as distinguished from your insincere promises to curtail spending at some indefinite time in the future) prior to raising the debt ceiling? Why do you continue to excoriate Republicans for insisting on such urgent legislation? Do you deny Paul Ryan’s report that bondholders and the financial markets are far more concerned about the United States not bringing its fiscal house in order than about not raising the debt ceiling? Do you deny that the United States will honor its interest and principal payments irrespective of its having reached its debt ceiling?”

“Do you plan to come to the table anytime soon and present concrete proposals of your own, or do you intend to stonewall through the 2012 election, calculating that you can win re-election simply by slinging arrows at Ryan for attacking the third rail of politics and its cousins?”

“Or are you too busy directing the National Labor Relations Board in its lawless war on Boeing, our largest exporter, in favor of your union bosses; directing Eric Holder’s unconscionable decision to prosecute CIA interrogators whose work product made possible the bin Laden raid; directing Kathleen Sebelius as to which of your political friends will receive Obamacare favoritism waivers; directing your EPA’s overt war against offshore drilling; directing your administration’s refusal to protect America’s borders; and devising ways to mistreat our ally Israel?” Oh, that’s right. You never interfere with the prerogative of your “independent” agencies. My bad.

Obama and the Democrats have no excuse under the sun for their wanton failure to address our debt crisis. It’s time they answered for it.

2012 Is the Republicans’ Election To Lose
By David Limbaugh

We are living in strange times indeed when it’s not laughable to suggest that President Obama will be difficult to beat in 2012. Well, I’m not buying it, even considering any positive (but inevitably temporary) surge Obama may receive with Osama bin Laden’s death.

In 2008, as an economic crisis played into his hands, Obama ran against an uninspiring opponent in John McCain, campaigned on grandiose promises in lieu of a record, and cultivated and rode a mainstream media wave based on a myth of his messiahship. Yet he still only won with 53 percent of the vote.

Obama had painted a bleak picture of America, which didn’t really have much to do with the immediate financial crisis we were then undergoing, though he milked that for all it was worth and incorporated it into his narrative while enjoying a complete pass for his role in creating it.

Obama described an America that had lost its way and exploited the naive idealism of youth voters, promising that he would usher in a new kind of politics and an era of “hope and change.”

Obama not only got the youth vote out but also garnered an unprecedented share of it. Some 54.5 percent of Americans 18 to 29 voted in 2008, and they constituted the highest category of the electorate voting. (Seniors — 65 or older — constituted 16 percent.)

Young voters reportedly preferred Obama over McCain by 68 percent to 30 percent — the highest margin in that demographic since exit polling began reporting voting results by age group in 1976. The youth vote is believed responsible for delivering the two swing states of Indiana and North Carolina to Obama.

Unfortunately for Obama, he has not been able to sustain the young voters’ irrational exuberance. In the November 2010 midterm elections, just 20.4 percent of Americans younger than 30 voted, compared with 23.5 percent in the previous midterm in 2006. That’s about a million fewer youth voters.

But how could it be otherwise? It’s one thing to run on platitudes against a party on whose watch the economy lurched into crisis just in time for the election. It’s another to run on a record that not only failed to fulfill any of its optimistic promises but also is horrific in actual terms by any objective measure.

Whereas Obama was once seen as far above the fray of petty partisan politics and unencumbered by the stale, corrupt traditions that hamstring Beltway politicians from delivering reform, he is now known to be as petty and hyper-partisan as the best of the party bosses of old.

For as long as he could — and beyond — Obama tapped the Bush-scapegoating meme, blaming all of his failures on his predecessor. But without a miraculous economic rebound, he’s going to have a very difficult time explaining away his quite specific pledge to keep employment below 8 percent, not to mention ever-soaring gas prices.

Obama now owns the national debt, which would double in his first five years and triple in 10. He’s been conspicuously reckless on the issue and has chosen to attack Republicans with class warfare rather than advance responsible policies to reform entitlements and reverse the debt crisis.

His socialistic ideology and policies have horrified the American people to the point that a grass-roots uprising spontaneously erupted throughout the nation in the form of the tea party protests. Contrast this with Obama’s leftist constituencies, which are just as often vexed by him as they are pleased with him. When you consider voter intensity alone on both sides, Obama goes into 2012 with a major disadvantage.

Moreover, Obama is no longer popular; his approval ratings are suffering, but more telling are the strong disapproval ratings he has received since mid-2009, showing that he not only is among the most divisive presidents in history but also evokes extremely high negatives. That’s remarkable, given the hype surrounding him in the beginning and the mainstream media’s continued protection.

Even Obama’s personal credibility and ability to connect with voters on substantive issues are severely diminished. The more he spoke about Obamacare the less popular this albatross became. His misrepresentations, his secrecy in governance, and his abuses of power and the Constitution will be further handicaps for him.

It is true that an ideal Republican candidate has yet to emerge, but any credible candidate the Republicans nominate should begin as the odds-on favorite, no matter what propaganda to the contrary the MSM marshal to bombard us. Note that the spate of pessimistic predictions concerning Gov. Scott Walker’s conservative policies in Wisconsin did not prevent the re-election of Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser.

Provided Republicans don’t forget they’re in a fight for the survival of the nation and don’t allow their stark policy differences with Obama to be diluted by failing to aggressively articulate their positions, 2012 will be the GOP’s presidential election to lose.