Unfortunately, I was in Romania when Obama made his State of the Union speech. If I wanted to watch it live I would have had to stay up until 4 a.m. I certainly wasn't about to do that. Maybe for the Super Bowl but definitely not for Barack.
When I returned home I was feeling kind of guilty, so I watched a replay. It was exactly what I expected. Miraculously, he had become a reformed moderate and seemed to promise everyone his far-left liberal days were over. It's the same tactic he took to get himself elected, and I guess he thought it would work again. I thought maybe I was watching his first campaign speech for the 2012 elections.
Unfortunately, Barack (for you, that is, not for the country) it's not going to work this time. Your soaring rhetoric and charismatic charm dazzled a lot of people the first time, but you have lost a lot of those prior supporters simply because they have seen that you were untruthful about everything you were promising in 2008.
It worked the first time when you had people totally ignoring your past track record of being the Senate's most liberal senator, having no experience, abstaining on many Senate votes (what leadership) and no history that proved you had the competence to sit in the White House.
How much of the youth vote do you think you're going to get this time after they have watched you on your foolish spending spree, which yielded no results but saddled them with an impossible-to-pay future debt burden?
I can't wait to hear you explain the $3 trillion additional debt you created in only your first two years, bringing the total up to $14 trillion, and most of this debt is owed to the Chinese. I seem to remember when you called the $8.3 trillion debt limit requested by President George W. Bush "a sign of leadership failure."
How about the $1.4 trillion budget deficit you have saddled the country within just your first year? How about the failed trillion-dollar stimulus bill to create jobs, yet unemployment went from 7.8 percent to well over 9 percent (I think it peaked at 9.8 percent) with no sign of lessening? The only policies that have worked for you have been those that were a continuation of Bush's policies. You remember him, don't you? The guy you loved to blame all your failures on. People are seeing through that strategy as well.
Let me teach you a lesson. Government doesn't create jobs, Barack; all governments create are bureaucracies.
No, Barack, your days are numbered. You have called in all your chits, and no one trusts you anymore.
You are so caught up with yourself that you don't even see yourself -- or Democratic leaders Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid -- to blame for the historic shellacking your party took in November. The three of you gave the Republicans (mostly conservatives) 63 seats in the House of Representatives and six more Senate seats, so your majority there went from filibuster-proof to only 53 to 47.
Even better news is the 2012 elections will allow further gains in the House as conservatives find better candidates to run.
The Senate picture is looking pretty rosy also. Of the 33 Senate seats coming up for election in 2012, 23 are Democrats and only 10 are Republican. It is estimated that only eight of the Democratic seats are safe, and 12 are from states that went Republican in 2008. The other three are toss-ups. Do you really think your slim majority in the Senate will hold up as those vulnerable senators fight for their political lives?
So, Barack, your political career is coming to a rapid end. It does not matter what you say anymore or how well you say it since you have proven yourself to be dishonest. Remember all the times you or your minions have called the Republicans enemies who "should be punished" and arrogantly told them to passively sit in the back? How about when you said they (the Republicans) bring a knife to a fight and you'll bring a gun? What civility, Barack; what bipartisanship.
But we conservatives can't afford to rest. We have plenty of facts of his failures to keep reminding centrists and independents that they didn't get what they thought they were getting and not to make the same mistake again. I can assure you that there are vast numbers of individuals who are having voter remorse.
Yes, I became very distrustful and suspicious very early on in his speech. I think it was when his lips started moving.
Tom Sears is a local professor of accounting in Oneonta. He can be reached at searsthomas16@gmail.com. His column appears every other week. His columns can be found at www.thedailystar.com/tomsears.
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