PrintSeptember 13, 2010
We Are the Ones Who'll Show You the Door
The citizen resistance to Obama's progressive agenda that quickened in the summer of 2009 will soon intersect with an electoral coda. On November 2, Democrats featured in the political ballet we've endured during the last two years will face the voters.
"The Obama Resistance Grows," Lee Cary, American Thinker, August 5, 2009. "Spontaneous, uncoordinated, passionate -- citizen resistance to Obama socialism grows by the day...Regardless of the decibel-level of the opposition to Obamacare and Cap & Tax that Congress hears back home, many will return to their Safe Zone inside the Capitol and vote against the wishes of their constituents. They are, after all, wiser and more knowledgeable in these matters than the voters. They may chose not to give us the government we want, but the government they think we should want. And would want, if we knew what was good for us. Such is the timeless arrogance of power. If that happens, stand-by. For the American resistance will continue to mount, and soon begin to register on the Richter scale."In his Super Tuesday speech on February 5, 2008, Presidential Candidate Senator Barack Obama told a crowd of adoring fans that, "Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for." With great delight, the crowd cheered.
Now another election approaches. During the intervening months, much has changed in America. But not all of it came in ways that all among the cheering crowd had hoped. More than a few now know they were seduced by the siren song of soaring oratory that lured them to buy the sizzle without tasting the steak. Consequently, Obama's presidency and our national affairs are in a mess of historic proportions. And his once-celebrated rhetorical flourishes have turned strangely bland and flat, having gone from soar to bore in two years.
During the last great silly season, Obama remarked in August 2008 that "McCain doesn't know what he's up against." He was right about that. Unlike McCain, though, many Democrat members of Congress do know what they're up against in the midterm election. They're up against We The People.
The legacy media calls it voter anger. The span of that anger, Beltway pundits explain, ranges from the disappointment of those on the Left who feel betrayed by Democrat underachievement to the Right's association with a trumped-up media charge of racism against the Tea Party movement. Tea Party people and the GOP minority in Congress have become the default scapegoats to explain the Democrats' failures. But it was we the people who handed the surgical wing over to a cadre of grocery butchers. And now that patients are flat-lining, the Chief of Surgery says, "Yea, but just think how bad it'd be we hadn't operated."
So while "anger" is the template word popular among the legacy media, it doesn't fully capture the public mood. It misses the insult and offense we feel from a ruling class in Congress, led by the White House, who think it more effective to drive Americans like cattle than lead us as civil servants. We will follow, but we won't be herded. We've been irrevocably offended by their smug condescension and insulted by their collective arrogance -- mostly by Democrats, but not solely so -- and the Jeremiah Wright chickens are close to home.
When Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaced General Joe Johnston as commander of the Confederate army that opposed Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's march toward Atlanta, he fired a field commander who led one of the most brilliant strategic retreats against a superior force in military history. Johnston was so respected by his former enemies that decades later, he was invited to serve as an Honorary Pallbearer at Sherman's funeral. In his place, Davis appointed a firebrand named John Bell Hood who was defeated at the Battle of Atlanta and then carelessly crashed the remnants of Johnston's army against the Union bulwarks at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee. Upon hearing that Johnston had been sacked, one of his soldiers said, "We loved him, because he made us love ourselves."
Many of us are persuaded that Barack Obama carries a biased respect for America that runs short of love for country. We don't expect our elected leaders to display a greater patriotism than those they serve. But neither will we long abide leaders who display less. We notice these things.
The collective jury has reached a decision on the current congressional Democrats. If their losses are great enough come November, that same jury will immediately begin deliberating on the victorious Republicans. For now, though, the message for many Democrats in Congress is this.
We are the ones who'll show you the door.
