Monica Crowley:
There will be a lot of argument made about why Mitt Romney (and so many other Republicans lost last night): he ran a poor campaign, he played it too safe, President Obama ran a more effective campaign, the Democrats’ bogus “war on women” worked, Republicans have to find a way to “talk” to women and Latinos and black voters…And on and on. All background noise and not particularly relevant right now.
A very slight majority—but a majority—of the American people KNOWINGLY chose four more years (at least) of high unemployment, anemic economic growth, break-the-bank spending, unsustainable and record-breaking deficits and debt, unpopular and bankrupting socialized medicine, and record numbers of people on food stamps and living in poverty. They KNOWINGLY chose four more years….of this.
A lot of folks are attributing Obama’s win more to his hypnotic hold on so many people than his actual policies, but I think that’s too simplistic a view. While Obama IS a uniquely seductive figure—and while many still feel a deep emotional investment in the first black president—it IS his policies which are—paradoxically—responsible for his win.
When Obama came into office in January 2009, he had three main, overarching goals: first, to expand government as fast and as widely as possible; the ultimate objective of that was to expand the number of people dependent of government as fast and as widely as possible; and the ultimate objective of THAT was to leverage it into a permanent Democrat voting majority. If you are getting a constant stream of freebies from a government promising to stick it to the other guy while providing you with cradle-to-grave “security,” you are less likely to vote out the guy doling out the free stuff.
Obama had a multi-pronged strategy to achieve those three goals, but two were particularly effective. First, he chose a path of divide and conquer to pit Americans against each other in order to make it easier to slide in his radical redistributionist agenda. He divided us by class, gender, race, and age. He turned the American motto, “E Pluribus Unum” (“Out of Many, One”) upside down. It is now, “Out of One, Many.” The American experiment cannot go on as it once did driven by divisions and envy rather than uniting values and common goals.
The other thing Obama understood was that if you expand government and dependency on it AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE, you take the sting out of a bad economy. The more government aid and programs to “take care” of you during an economic crisis, the less likely you are to throw the bums out who caused—or who are prolonging—the economic crisis. Therefore, by exploding government dependency, many Americans who would normally be bearing the brunt of this atrocious economy do not feel the kind of acute pain they would have in the past. As recently as 15 to 20 years ago, an incumbent presiding over this kind of disastrous economy would be thrown out on his ear (see: Jimmy Carter; see: George H.W. Bush. Carter’s economy was dismal, but Bush 41 got tossed for a much milder economic downturn than the epic disaster of the Obama economy).
Take the big pain out of a bad economy by getting people dependent, win elections. Get that coveted permanent Democrat voting majority. Although the results were extremely close last night and the country is fairly well divided, enough dependents and those who love dependency chose that path to bring us close to that permanent Democrat voting majority—if we’re not already there. Normal Americans look at Obama’s economic record and see destruction. Obama, his fellow leftists, and now, sadly, a slight majority of Americans, look at it and see a success.