[StBernard] Conservative Review - The Coming Backlash

[Westley Annis]

The Coming Backlash
by Patrick J. Buchanan

As Americans render what Catholics call temporal judgment 
on George Bush, are they aware of the radical course 
correction they are about to make? 

This center-right country is about to vastly strengthen a 
liberal Congress whose approval rating is 10 percent and 
implant in Washington a regime further to the left than 
any in U.S. history. Consider. 

As of today, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco 
Democrat, anticipates gains of 15-30 seats. Sen. Harry 
Reid, whose partisanship grates even on many in his own 
party, may see his caucus expand to a filibuster-proof 
majority where he can ignore Republican dissent. 

Headed for the White House is the most left-wing member of 
the Senate, according to the National Journal. To the vice 
president's mansion is headed Joe Biden, third most liberal 
as ranked by the National Journal, ahead of No. 4, Vermont 
Socialist Bernie Sanders. 

What will this mean to America? An administration that is 
either at war with its base or at war with the nation. 

America may desperately desire to close the book on the 
Bush presidency. Yet there is, as of now, no hard evidence 
it has embraced Obama, his ideology, or agenda. Indeed, 
his campaign testifies, by its policy shifts, that it is 
fully aware the nation is still resisting the idea of an 
Obama presidency. 

In the later primaries, even as a panicked media were 
demanding that Hillary drop out of the race, she 
consistently routed Obama in Ohio and Pennsylvania and 
crushed him in West Virginia and Kentucky. 

By April and May, the Democratic Party was manifesting 
all the symptoms of buyer's remorse over how it had voted 
in January and February. 

Obama's convention put him eight points up. But, as soon 
as America heard Sarah Palin in St. Paul, the Republicans 
shot up 10 points and seemed headed for victory. 

What brought about the Obama-Biden resurgence was nothing 
Obama and Biden did, but the mid-September crash of Fannie, 
Freddie, Lehman Brothers, AIG, the stock market, where 
$4 trillion was wiped out, the $700 billion bailout of 
Wall Street that enraged Middle America -- and John 
McCain's classically inept handling of the crisis. 

In short, Obama has still not closed the sale. Every time 
America takes a second look at him, it has second thoughts, 
and backs away. 

Even after the media have mocked and pilloried Palin and 
ceded Obama and Biden victory in all four debates, the 
nation, according to Gallup, is slowly moving back toward 
the Republican ticket. 

Moreover, Obama knows Middle America harbors deep 
suspicions of him. Thus, he has jettisoned the rhetoric 
about the "fierce urgency of now," and "We are the people 
we've been waiting for," even as he has jettisoned position 
after position to make himself acceptable. 

His "flip-flops" testify most convincingly to the fact 
that Obama knows that where he comes from is far outside 
the American mainstream. For what are flip-flops other 
than concessions that a position is untenable and must 
be abandoned? 

Flip-flopping reveals the prime meridian of presidential 
politics. If an analyst will collate all the positions to 
which all the candidates move, he will find himself close 
to the true center of national politics. 

Thus, though he is the nominee of a party that is in 
thrall to the environmental movement, Obama has signaled 
conditional support for offshore drilling and pumping out 
of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. 

While holding to his pledge for a pullout of combat 
brigades from Iraq in 16 months, he has talked of 
"refining" his position and of a residual U.S. force 
to train the Iraqi Army and deal with Al Qaeda. 

On Afghanistan, he has called for 10,000 more troops and 
U.S. strikes in Pakistan to kill Bin Laden, even without 
prior notice or the permission of the Pakistani government. 

Since securing the nomination, Obama has adopted the Scalia 
position on the death penalty for child rape and the right 
to keep a handgun in the home. He voted to give the 
telecoms immunity from prosecution for colluding in Bush 
wiretaps. This onetime sympathizer of the Palestinians now 
does a passable imitation of Ariel Sharon. 

No Democrat has ever come out of the far left of his party 
to win the presidency. McGovern, the furthest left, stayed 
true to his convictions and lost 49 states. 

Obama has chosen another course. Though he comes out of 
the McGovern-Jesse Jackson left, he has shed past positions 
like support for partial birth abortion as fast as he has 
shed past associations, from William Ayers to ACORN, from 
the Rev. Jeremiah Wright to his fellow parishioners at 
Trinity United. 

One question remains: Will a President Obama, with his 
party in absolute control of both Houses, revert to the 
politics and policies of the Left that brought him the 
nomination, or resist his ex-comrades' demands that he 
seize the hour and impose the agenda ACORN, Ayers, Jesse, 
and Wright have long dreamed of? 

Whichever way he decides, he will be at war with them, 
or at war with us. If Barack wins, a backlash is coming.