There has been a lot of talk in the last few weeks of how badly President Obama is doing in the polls. Many of his detractors are of the opinion that it is going to be easy to defeat him in 2012. I am a detractor, but I do not hold that opinion. A word of warning to us all, President Obama is not going to go down in defeat without a fight and he is being encouraged by his supporters to do just that. They want him to give us a fight that none of us will ever forget and that fight is centering around the jobs bill that he has proposed to Congress. As of today, he is making a three-day campaign/fund raising swing on the West Coast, ending in Denver. He is going on the attack during this trip, pulling no punches. From Fox News:
President Barack Obama charged that the Republican vision of government would “fundamentally cripple America,” as he tried out his newly combative message on the liberal West Coast.
Aiming to renew the ardor of Democratic loyalists who have grown increasingly disenchanted with him, the president on Sunday mixed frontal attacks on Republicans with words of encouragement intended to buck up the faithful as the 2012 campaign revs up.
“From the moment I took office what we’ve seen is a constant ideological pushback against any kind of sensible reforms that would make our economy work better and give people more opportunity,” the president said at an intimate brunch fundraiser at the Medina, Washington, home of former Microsoft executive Jon Shirley, where about 65 guests were paying $35,800 per couple to listen to Obama.
Similar messages followed at an event in Seattle and two more in California’s Silicon Valley Sunday evening, as Obama pushed through a seven-stop fundraising swing that was taking him from Seattle to Hollywood to San Diego through Monday. The three-day West Coast swing, ending Tuesday in Denver, offered him the chance to re-engage with some of his most liberal and deep-pocketed supporters.
The trip comes as Obama has shifted from focusing on compromise with Republicans on Capitol Hill to calling out House Speaker John Boehner and others by name. The president has criticized them as obstructionists while demanding their help in passing his $447 billion jobs bill.
The revamped approach is a relief to Democratic activists fed up by what they viewed as the president’s ceding of ground to the Republicans on tax cuts and other issues while the U.S. economy has stalled and unemployment is stuck above 9 percent.
Obama said 2012 would be an especially tough election because people are discouraged and disillusioned with government, but he also said he was determined because so much is at stake.
The Republican alternative, Obama said, is “an approach to government that will fundamentally cripple America in meeting the challenges of the 21st century.”
President Barack Obama charged that the Republican vision of government would “fundamentally cripple America,” as he tried out his newly combative message on the liberal West Coast.At one of the stops on his trip, signs were being held up that said “tax the rich” and that seems to be the common mantra among the liberal supporters who are urging the President to attack the Republicans at every opportunity. These are the same supporters who were so upset that President Obama agreed to the compromise to raise the debt ceiling. Their anger was based on one fact, ie. that he didn’t hold his ground and insist on raising taxes only, with no budget cuts. The new jobs bill eases that anger because it clearly aims to raise taxes on the rich, with the money going to pay for public projects and to hire more government employees, all members of public unions. If this is their idea of helping the economy, then God help us all.
On NPR this morning, they had a story covering this latest trip and had a sound byte of President Obama saying something about how America was above the small politics that we are seeing in Washington. That maybe the case, but let me remind us all that the Democrats played those same games when they were in control of the House of Representatives. As a result, we now have Obamacare, Frank-Dodd, and other pieces of legislation that are doing our country no good. With the President’s newly found fighting spirit, can you imagine what we would be facing if Nancy Pelosi was still Speaker of the House? That is a very scary thought, my friends, and it is all the more reason to work as hard as we can to highlight and examine exactly what the President is trying to do. That starts with the American Jobs Act and should include any other moves he makes between now and the election in November 2012.
I can predict what is going to happen, although the outcome has yet to be determined. Anything the Republicans do to stand against the President and his agenda will be decried as obstructionist and small minded. The media will explain to us how the GOP is standing up for the rich and wealthy and how President Obama is standing up for the little guy in America, from the middle class on down. They will say nothing about the long term consequences of his actions, nothing about the debt and deficit continuing to climb. All we will hear is how we need to tax the rich and if we do not, we are letting the rest of America down.
What troubles me more than anything is the fact that there are a great number of Americans who believe that to be the case. They believe the best way, the only way out of the crisis we are in now is to tax the rich. If we can not change that perception, and believe me, it is up to us, we may not be able to defeat President Obama in 2012 and that is not an option. Let’s gird up and begin this fight anew. We can afford to do no less.