The constant liberal drumbeat throughout the election season told Americans how badly President Bush screwed up the country. It was so bad, the leftists told us, that not even their messiah, President Obama, could get us out. Liberals do love to rewrite history, don’t they? But you may be familiar with an old axiom that says history is written by the victor. And while the conservative victory isn’t complete, by virtue of the fact that we’re saddled with Mr. Obama for another two years, conservatives have won a key battle in stopping a leftist progressive agenda implemented by this president and his cronies. All the high-profile Republicans like Rubio, Paul, and Boehner acknowledged that the election victories were not a sign that America suddenly loves Republicans. They all recognized that America’s vote was a rejection of President Obama, and Republicans now have to prove worthy of the second chance they’ve been given. Still, after huge election victories, America can finally begin to wake from the national nightmare that liberals have imposed on us. We can again dream of leaving a prosperous America to our children. We can once again start to smell the return of individual freedom. Ronald Reagan once said that freedom was like the air we breathe. If it’s denied us, even for a second, we begin to realize how important it is to us. With the election of a Congress to stop the radical-in-chief, the nation can at least exhale with some confidence that their next breath isn’t that far off.
To all the socialists and left-wing apologists out there who insist our current economic crisis is all Bush’s fault, I’d like to remind you of a few things. When President Bush took office, he too was handed a recession from Bill Clinton. Then there was that little thing called the 9-11 terrorist attacks. After those enormous hits to our country, President Bush had a choice. He could adopt pro-growth tax policies and let our capitalist system work. Or he could raise taxes, or leave the Clinton tax increases in place. He chose option one. And then America did what she’s always done: got to work. The private sector added millions of jobs, and revenue increased to the federal treasury, as it always does when taxes are cut. In short, America prospered. In fact, the highest the unemployment rate got under Bush was 5.99 percent. He ended his two terms with a 5.76% unemployment rate. Though Bush deserves some criticism for not coupling tax cuts with significant spending cuts, everyone seems to forget who controlled the purse strings for the last two years of the Bush presidency. That’s right, Democrats controlled the legislative branch and set the stage for the anointed one.
Enter President Obama. He had a choice too. He could have instituted pro-growth policies or “fundamentally change America.” He chose option two. Since Obama took office, America has lost over three million jobs. Our unemployment rate sits at 9.7%. Real unemployment, which includes part-time workers and those who have just stopped looking, sits at 17%. But take heart liberals: there was increased hiring of government workers. That’s important because Mr. Obama had to make sure his public employee union buddies had plenty of taxpayer dollars to fund his 2012 campaign. Our debt has sky-rocketed. Every child born in America comes into this world over $42,000 in debt. Employers won’t hire because of the uncertainty that comes with ObamaCare. They also fear future unknown burdens on the productive members of our society from a White House that is oppressive but creative in how they implement that oppression. (Could they really get away with an oppression czar?)
How many times did we hear Mr. Obama on the campaign trail telling Republicans that they couldn’t have the keys back to the national car? The president claimed the GOP ran the car into a ditch, a ditch that he successfully got us out of. There are two problems here. First, if this is Obama’s version of being “out of the ditch,” I don’t want to see the repair job. And I sure as hell don’t want the bill. Secondly, Mr. Obama’s idea of “pulling the car out of the ditch” is to take it apart piece by piece. He then takes the parts and builds a one-horse carriage. Of course he’d be the donkey (reference to Democrat, not a jackass) who pulls the new wagon called the United States economy. (Wagons are green you know.) Unfortunately, other nations have decided to call a tow truck and repair their battered national cars in a way designed to get them back on the track to promoting prosperity. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 16-country euro zone reports GDP growth of over 3%. Germany led the way with 9% GDP growth. Compare that to our anemic 2.0% growth under Obama. It bears pointing out that German Chancellor Angela Merkel flatly rejected Obama’s call for increased “stimulus” spending. Given Mr. Obama’s track record on the economy, I’d say he isn’t qualified to work on my three-year-old’s Radio Flyer scooter, much less the economic engine of the world’s greatest republic.
Conservatives have had to listen ad nauseam as liberals try to convince the American people that tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan caused our economic mess. The left has reminded us that these wars have been the longest in U.S. history. In Iraq, for example, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office puts the cost of the 8-year battle at $709 billion. That’s for military and related activities, including training of Iraqi forces and diplomatic operations. Obama topped that in a day when he signed his failed $862-billion stimulus bill. And the president has been busy telling us that it was greedy Wall Street execs alone who derailed the nation’s economy. If only we had more regulation (that’s liberal code for control), we’d have been able to prevent this catastrophe. The truth is the abuse of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was primarily responsible for creating our mortgage meltdown. The act enabled politicians to put pressure on banks to partake in the practice of lending money to those that had no prayer of making their payments. Wall Street, being enabled by this law, took full advantage and made their money and kicked bad mortgages down the road to government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These GSEs privatize profit while they socialize risk. It was the CRA that enabled the housing crash. And like any good pyramid scheme, the folks left holding the bag at the end get the shaft. In this case, it was the American taxpayers who had to pay for the actions of Democratic politicians like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Wall Street wasn’t blameless, but neither was government. And which cause of our mortgage meltdown was left untouched by President Obama’s so-called financial reform bill? That’s right, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
America is a center-right nation. That’s why Republicans lost control of the Congress back in 2006. They had governed against the people’s wishes. And that explains why Democrats took this historic beating in the 2010 elections. Democrats took what the Republicans had done, and then tripled down on it. And as the business of our country moves forward we will all see how the Republicans do with their second chance from the voters. If they behave as a party that has learned to listen to the people, they’ll do fine. If President Obama continues his large lurch left ignoring the people, he’ll be held to account. I must confess that I along with many conservatives dared to believe that Mr. Obama was different. We wondered: could he really be this unifying, transcendent leader? We didn’t have to wonder long. But unlike the 2008 election, Mr. Obama now has a record. And so far, it is an abysmal one. He heard the objections from the people and in turn called us his “enemies.” If he persists in trying to transform America into a European-style socialist state, he will be a one-term president. That will be a change that Americans can truly believe in and change we richly deserve.
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