PrintNovember 6, 2010
President Obama's Own Brezhnev Doctrine
In his post-election news conference, President Obama promised to work with the new House majority to achieve common goals for the American people. He was subdued, that's certain. "Some election nights are more fun than others," he said, obviously referring to the long-anticipated comeuppance he and his party received from voters whom he characterized as "impatient."
I think the voters were marvelously patient. The lines stretched out across the country. Record numbers of people voted early this year. They had been crying out to President Obama for nearly two years: JOBS. JOBS.
And his answer was Stimulus, ObamaCare, and Cap and Trade. The stimulus was rammed through with virtually no Republican support. Well, with overwhelming majorities in both houses, who needs Republicans? If we don't rush this giant stimulus bill through -- and put our kids and grandkids on the hook for another $780 billion -- why, the employment rate could go higher than 8%. When voters trooped to the polls, the latest unemployment figure stood at 9.6%.
ObamaCare absolutely had to be passed, Obama said, because health costs were a major factor in depressing the economy. How's that? It costs small businesses too much now to hire new people. We need them to hire more new workers. And he's placing new obstacles in their way.
Cap and Trade. Amazing. With the economy on life support, Obama actually pressed the House of Representatives to vote for a bill that would be a government takeover of all industry. Government would decide what you produce, where you produce, how much of it you produce.
If that isn't socialism, it's a darned good imitation. The bill was so extreme that West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin became a national figure vowing to blow a hole in the bill with his rifle. And Manchin was running as a Democrat!
I can only imagine what lame-duck congressmen like Virginia's Rick Boucher (D) think about Mr. Obama's forcing him and so many of his coal-state colleagues to walk the plank on the Cap and Trade bill. Boucher and a host of others were defeated on Tuesday. They lost their seats -- and the Democratic-controlled Senate never even voted on Cap and Trade. Bad enough to lose, but to lose for one of Mr. Obama's more bizarre enthusiasms must be an especially bitter pill to swallow.
The president does not do contrition, says Britain's prestigious journal, The Economist.
Recall that it was this journal's endorsement in 2008 that gave Barack Obama gravitas. Now,they are urging him not to dig in his heels against revisions and reconsiderations of some of the hastily passed bills of the 111th Congress.
I hope he will heed the advice of sincere critics like The Economist. I must say, I'm not confident he will. He told his press conference we could not "re-litigate" the issues that had been resolved in the 111th Congress.
That is a close approximation of what Leonid Brezhnev said about Soviet gains: What we have, we keep. Socialism wasn't about to yield an inch, the late Kremlin boss said.
Stanley Kurtz is out with a new book, Radical-in-Chief. Mr. Kurtz told an interviewer that his extensive research traced Barack Obama's roots to his college days. He's not a Communist, Kurtz writes. But he is a Socialist, albeit a democratic Socialist.
The formative political experience for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz believes, was the series of Marxist Scholar conferences he attended in the mid-1980s, beginning with one in New York in 1983.
If that is true, it would be one of the saddest commentaries on the career of the very talented Barack Obama. For it was in 1983 that President Reagan invaded the tiny island of Grenada.
Liberals -- including even normally sensible people like New York's Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- sneered at the liberation of tiny Grenada. Why, it's only a pinprick of an island. It's barely 1/39 the size of Rhode Island.
Perhaps. But Reagan's nearly bloodless liberation of Grenada began a decade-long process of unraveling of the USSR. The Brezhnev Doctrine -- what we have, we hold -- was proven wrong. Marxist inevitability was overturned.
How tragic that young Barack Obama could not have been down in Grenada with our troops to see the exhilarated people -- all of them black -- welcoming their American rescuers, to see the U.S. med students kissing the ground was they returned to the good old USA.
Whether Obama wishes it or not, the new 112th Congress is going to make a strong effort at repeal of ObamaCare and at sequestering funds from the failed stimulus. He can wield his veto pen for two years. But if he does, then Americans may wield theirs.
