This Could Be the Start of Something Big!

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If you'd like to listen to music while you read, click the arrow to hear Count Basie version of our title song, and then read on as it plays.


If there is one thing both major parties should have learned from experience by now it is not to "over-reach" the natural pendulum swing of American politics. The Republicans will need to remember this between now and November but especially in these delicious days of Democratic "melt down" drizzled on a scoop of Obama Neapolitan "please all please none" ice cream. Eat slowly; relish each nuance; and don't do the same stupid thing yourselves before November.

What was so encouraging to me about the peoples' usurpation of the self-perpetuating, 50-year "Kennedy Seat" with Scott Brown was that it seemed to come from nowhere.

The Democrats thought they were pulling America along on a big-government bandwagon tied to the rope of liberalism. They kept pulling the rope, but didn't realize the wagon had stopped several steps behind them. What they were pulling was not a rope; it was actually a huge rubber band and Tuesday it had done all the stretching it could stand before pulling back so hard it left the tone-deaf Democratic majority looking up at the sky wondering what hit 'em.

Some foolish liberals think Brown's win means the progressives did not pull the rubber band hard enough or fast enough. Let them think that; let them keep pulling a nation where it doesn't want to go--their rubber band will snap along with their future in politics or punditry.

In the meantime, enjoy a couple editorials and political cartoons. The first (in purple) is Peggy Noonan, a writer I had admired since her time with Reagan, but who frankly seemed to be sipping the Obama Kool-aid for about a year. I guess that's why her thoughts should get Obama's attention. The second (in blue) is from Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of U.S.News & World Report. [The cartoons are signed by their artists. Double-click to enlarge.]

"It is not the end of something so much as the beginning of something. Ted Kennedy took his era with him. But what has begun is something new and potentially promising.

"President Obama carried Massachusetts by 26 points on Nov. 4, 2008. Fifteen months later, on Jan. 19, 2010, the eve of the first anniversary of his inauguration, his party's candidate lost Massachusetts by five points. That's a 31-point shift. Mr. Obama won Virginia by six points in 2008. A year later, on Nov. 2, 2009, his party's candidate for governor lost by 18 points—a 25 point shift. Mr. Obama won New Jersey in 2008 by 16 points. In 2009 his party's incumbent governor lost re-election by four points—a 20-point shift.

"In each race, the president's party lost independent voters, who in 2008 voted like Democrats and in 2010 voted like Republicans.

"Is it a backlash? It seems cooler than that, a considered and considerable rejection that appears to be signaling a conservative resurgence based on issues and policies, most obviously opposition to increased government spending, fear of higher taxes, and rejection of the idea that expansion of government can or will solve our economic challenges...." Peggy Noonan

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The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama

“The first trouble is that his gift for inspiration aroused expectations, stoked to unprecedented heights by his own staff, that he would solve the climate crisis on Monday, the jobs crisis on Tuesday, the financial crisis on Wednesday, the education crisis on Thursday, Afghanistan on Friday, Iraq on Saturday, and rest on Sunday....

"Perhaps the inevitable outcome was disappointment—and on this Obama has not disappointed. Alas, he has accelerated the deflation of hope with his extraordinary volume of public appearances. In his first six months, he gave three times as many interviews as George W. Bush, four times as many prime-time news conferences as Bill Clinton, and more interviews than both combined: 93 for Obama and 61 for his two immediate predecessors. He appeared on five Sunday talk shows on the same morning, followed the next day by David Letterman, the first-ever presidential appearance on a nighttime comedy show. In another week, he squeezed in addresses to the U.S. Climate Change Summit, the U.N. General Assembly, the U.N. Security Council, and a variety of press conferences. [In case you happened to miss the nation's introduction to "Pants on the Ground."]

"His promiscuity on TV has made him seem as if he is still a candidate instead of president and commander in chief. He—and his advisers—have failed to appreciate that national TV speeches are best reserved for those moments when the country faces a major crisis or a war. Now he faces the iron law of diminishing novelty.

"Despite this apparent accessibility, Obama's reliance on a teleprompter for flawless delivery made for boring and unemotional TV, compounding his cerebral and unemotional style. He has seemed not close but distant, not engaged but detached. Is it any wonder that the mystique of his presidency has eroded so that fewer people have listened to each successive foray?

"Poor results. But Obama's problems are more than a question of style. There is doubt aroused on substance. He sets deadlines and then lets too many pass. He announces a strategic review of Afghanistan, describing it as "a war of necessity," only to become less sure to the point that he didn't even seem committed to the policy that he finally announced. As for changing politics in Washington, he assigned the drafting of central legislative programs not to cabinet departments or White House staff but to the Democratic congressional leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the very people so mistrusted by the public...." Mortimer Zuckerman
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This Just in: If you wonder what a melt down looks like behind closed doors, Check out this clever parady that puts words in a disappointed dictator's mouth. [This video has over 1,500,000 hits in the first two days!]

The above parady is a must see laugh, but below are links to weekend op-ed pieces that underscore the significance of this week's special election:

Michael Goodwin of the New York Post: "Just as Dorothy and Toto exposed the ordinary man behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz," the voters in Massachusetts revealed that, in this White House, there is no there there. It's all smoke and mirrors, bells and whistles, held together with glib talk, Chicago politics and an audacious sense of entitlement. At the center is a young and talented celebrity whose worldview, we now know, is an incoherent jumble of poses and big-government instincts. His self-aggrandizing ambition exceeds his ability by so much that he is making a mess of everything he touches."

Nolan Finley of the Detroit News: "Obama's response to the Democrat's Bay State rebuke was to grab a pitchfork and try to elbow to the head of the mob. It's the greedy bankers you're angry with and not me, he insisted, vowing to renew his war on Wall Street with a vengeful vigor. It would be easy to assign his denial to tone deafness. It goes beyond that. It's a stubborn resistance to recognize that America doesn't want to go where he's trying to lead it. Obama is still taking his counsel from the leftist ideologues who are telling him that the trouble isn't that he's too liberal, but not liberal enough."

SHERMAN FREDERICK of the Las Vegas Review Journal:
Earth to Obama Nation... Pride goes before a fall "The night after ... Obama told ABC News that ... it was really the same voter anger that swept him into office a year ago that also swept Brown into office Tuesday. What, seriously? Voters so loved Obama they gave Massachusetts a Republican? Of all the perverted takeaways from Tuesday, that's the doozy of the bunch. But apparently this kind of weird delusion is consistent with the unbounded hubris of Team Obama.White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel blamed the loss on Coakley running a lousy race. Obama's trusted strategist David Axelrod said it was "local issues" -- not the Obama agenda -- that really drove the Brown win. Hello? Earth to the White House. The reason Republicans prevailed three times -- twice in traditional Democratic strongholds -- in the past 12 months is because the White House, with (I am sad to say) the help of Nevada's own Sen. Harry Reid, miscalculated the ache in the American voter for believable leadership. Instead of living up to their historic campaign, they engaged in a garden-variety reign of arrogance marked by business-as-usual politics, broken promises and back-room deals. Together -- Obama and Reid -- they failed to learn that the end doesn't justify the means...."

And George Will gives some advice in "Mandate to Moderate" that I hope team Obama is slow to grasp. I hope the liberals convice him to keep pushing his Big Government agenda (aka "socialism-light") so the people can keep throwing it back in their faces, allowing this new wave of awakened Americans to keep growing through the November elections.