Takeover
April 27, 2009
President Obama must be pretty bored right now.
Of course, he has his share of problems: a severely troubled economy, two wars yet to be concluded, the continued threat of another terrorist attack. Yet, he has to find the whole White House thing dull at this point. How could he not? He has no political competition, and he knows it.
Obama is king right now, and he will be for some time to come. While the Republicans continue to trip over their wingtips, he will continue to move the country to the left with absolute impunity. Not a bad gig, if you’re the one sitting in the big chair.
The first 100 days of the Obadministration have been hideous for the American right, as conservatives and Republicans continue their downward spiral. Yes, an estimated 340,000 Americans expressed their frustration with Obama’s actions at the “tea parties” earlier this month, but it was blind frustration. After all, where will those protestors go? Back to the Republicans, who started this socialism sewage last fall with the Billionaire’s Bailout?
According to Christopher Buckley’s forthcoming memoir, his legendary father William F. Buckley considered suicide in his final pain-filled months, but his strong Catholic faith prevented him from doing so. Presumably, strong faith is the only thing preventing conservatives and Republicans from ending it all en masse, as they watch the so-called loyal opposition continue to botch any effort at resisting Obama’s agenda.
Why can’t the right get it together? Why can’t conservatives of all stripes unite as one to thwart Obama’s efforts to move the country as far to the left as he can? Instead of unity, we have division—rhetorical fights over old-school conservatism and new-school conservatism, fights that come across to the rest of the country as nothing more than grade-school conservatism.
The American right is losing power at the exact same rate that Obama is consolidating it. Unlike President Clinton between 1995-1998, Obama has no fear of the conservative movement; he sees his supposed opponents as weak, without muscle or intellect—and sadly, he may be right.
Instead of clearly and coherently explaining the flaws in Obama’s policies, they’re engaging in kindergarten name-calling. Instead of finding new voices to raise questions about the Obama vision, they’re relying on the old faces—think Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.
What happened to the right? Where are the new organizers, the new breed of leaders who can revive the ailing body of conservatism? Where is the modern equivalent of Richard Viguerie and Paul Weyrich? Where is the 2009 version of the 1994 Newt Gingrich and William Kristol?
The American right is a team without a coach, a parish without a priest. There is no true intellectual leader on the right today, no one who can fill the shoes of the dead and aging icons. Without a leader who can provide a focus, a mission and a purpose, the right has turned into a raging mob.
Obama couldn’t care less that the American right’s natives are restless. Why should he? These men and women now have no power but the power to complain. Those who oppose Obama’s vision are now considered third-class citizens, isolated from the rest of America culturally and politically.
Obama is not the President of conservative America. He’s the President of the remainder of the country–the President of those who, either through their own conclusions or through propaganda, have come to regard the GOP as beneath contempt, and conservatives as nothing more than crazy Christian capitalists contemptuous of change. In his first 100 days as President, Obama has intentionally finished the job President Bush unintentionally started: the complete disenfranchisement of the American right.
Even if the Republicans manage to recapture the House and Senate in 2010, Obama will still have enough institutional power to frustrate the GOP and conservatives. Even if the economy continues to limp along into 2012, he will still have a broad coalition of progressive whites, blacks and Latinos that will turn out in droves to help him secure a second term (independents may also stick with him, if they buy into the notion that “he needs more time to fix George Bush’s mess”). If the economy turns around, watch out! He could have the first blowout victory in 28 years.
You just know Obama sits in the Oval Office chuckling to himself as he reflects upon the haplessness of his political adversaries. Sadly, the right was losing steam even before Obama became President, as conservatives stood behind Bush’s numerous big-government schemes. Credibility on limited-government issues is like virginity: once you lose it, you don’t ever get it back. Well, the Republicans lost it in the early- and mid-2000s; heck, they gave it up without so much as a kiss and an “I’ll text you later” afterwards. Thus, Obama is somewhat justified in regarding his loudest critics—those who rallied around the flag for a Republican socialist—as moral hypocrites.
Obama knows that the American right doesn’t have a damn clue as to how to stop him from permanently institutionalizing liberalism. So he’s coasting and boasting. It stands to reason, does it not, that Gingrich has emerged as one of the media’s most prominent anti-Obama voices? Just as the sight of a newborn child indicates that it’s been nine months since that child’s parents had sex, the sight of Gingrich indicates that it’s been fifteen years since the American right had smarts.
