And Rightly So

August 28, 2009

To my delight, our fellow Americans seem to be waking up to this reality. And much sooner than anyone could have hoped in the afterglow of Barack Obama's election to President only a few short months ago. The widespread dismay as our government proposes to take over the management of huge new swathes of the economy, all the while spending like a drunken sailor, may just be in time to stop the worst parts of President Obama’s domestic agenda.

What's changing people's minds about Obama's plans to expand government in all directions? Perhaps they're realizing that in the end they are the "other people" whose money our President is counting on to finance his ambitious plans. Obama's promise never to raise taxes on couples making less than $250,000 a year is harder and harder to believe. He's already signed a cigarette tax increase into law, and the pending "healthcare reform" (read socialized medicine by increments) legislation contains more new taxes that will hit the middle class hard. The middle class is where the money is. The few really rich Americans don't have enough of it to pay for all the President’s grand schemes -- running the doctors and the hospitals; remaking the energy sector to avert "climate change"; reorganizing banking and finance; retooling the auto industry. Unless you buy the absurd proposition that the Federal government manages things more economically than the free market, we're going to have to pay a pretty stiff bill at some point.

But people aren't just mad at being stuck with the bill. Leftists caricature conservatives as short-sighted, greedy people who care only about their own pocket books. (Liberals, of course, always act out of public-spirited concern for the wellbeing of the whole society -- which they're eager to pay for with other people's money.) But the tea party protesters and the angry folks at town hall meetings aren’t worried just about their taxes. They're concerned about government encroachment into all our lives, about the accelerated erosion of adult responsibility as the nanny state expands. That's why "healthcare reform" -- the part of Obama's agenda most dangerous to our liberty -- is inspiring the most outrage.

The likely voters sending Obama's approval rating down in the polls and the newly energized protesters crowding those town hall meetings are drawing on American traditions of cussed independence (which our elites don't seem to share or appreciate). Opponents of Obama's agenda are also acting out of a sense of reality about money that our political class seems to have lost touch with: You can't borrow yourself into prosperity. It seems that the something-for-nothing politicians have simply gone too far; they've lost the trust of their audience. Programs predicated on prosperity-by-government-magic are becoming unpopular. "Cash for Clunkers," for example, has won the disapproval of a solid majority of Americans. And more of us now want deficit reduction than "stimulus".

Defeat of the President's agenda is anything but assured. Mark Steyn's gloomy prediction is all too likely to come true: Obama could very well manage to pass a watered-down version of "healthcare reform" still bad enough that the statists can gradually improve it into the socialized system they want. This fight needs our attention and our energy. But we can take cheer. Last fall, the American people were lulled into wishful thinking by a clever demagogue. This summer, they're waking up.

--Elizabeth Kantor

andrightlyso@ConservativeBookClub.com