No, Mr. President, the Problem is Your Ideas, Not Politics

President Obama spoke in Michigan on August 11th and attempted to channel the Clintonesque triangulation strategy, declaring that “there is something wrong with our politics,” and urging the crowd to tell Washington that they’ve had enough of “bickering …. partisanship ... stalemates … gridlock..etc.” He railed on about the need to “work together… start passing some bills … in order to move this country forward.” He urged compromise and bi-partisanship.

There was some question in the opening months of Obama’s Presidency whether labeling the Obama/Pelosi/Reid agenda as “socialist” was legitimate. But now, the American public is on to Obama and his Far Left allies who run the Democrat Party.  They promote socialism, not in words, but worse, in their actions. And therein lies the explanation for not only the recent acrimonious budget battle in Washington, but for the deep and growing opposition to the agenda this Administration has for America’s future.

Americans reject socialism. And we won’t compromise on that.

Socialism necessarily destroys free markets, freedom and personal liberty.  We do not honor bi-partisanship above fundamental freedom. Neither compromise nor bi-partisanship is a virtue if what you are compromising with is wrong. 

(For those who thought socialism was another word for being nice, social and friendly, socialism means, according to Wikipedia, “an economic system in which the means of production are publicly or commonly owned and controlled cooperatively, or a political philosophy advocating such a system.” In plain English, it means that the government owns and controls everything—and the people are powerless. It is 100% anathema to the principles on which America was founded.)

Obama confessed his socialist mindset in his Joe the Plumber off-the-cuff (and undoubtedly regretted, un-teleprompted) campaign admission that he advocates taxes for the purpose of spreading the wealth around, a signature principle of socialism.  And in the short two-and-a-half years he’s held office, his actions have made crystal clear to a growing number of Americans that he is dedicated to using his Presidency to embed all of the socialist-style programs and thinking that he can into America’s political, legal and legislative fabric. 

From seizing government control over the auto industry, controlling the financial houses through the crony-capitalism of the Dodd-Frank bill, extending unemployment insurance payments and reliance on food stamps and other forms of welfare to unprecedented levels, growing the size, scope and power of the federal government, to the increasingly unpopular government takeover of our nation’s healthcare system, President Obama has proven his critics correct. 

He adores socialism and big government.

Socialism, and its kissing cousin communism, creates utter dependence on the government. Both have failed to produce prosperity, financial security or strength in every country where they’ve been tried.

In 2009, 2010 and this year, Americans registered their opposition to the growing menace in DC of bigger government and less freedom.  They protested through marches, they told pollsters every chance they got that they did not want socialized medicine, that they wanted the government out of their lives, not more deeply embedded in them.

The contrast between the Tea Party and 9/12 marches in Washington and all over America, whose message was demanding that government stop collecting and redistributing wealth, with the marches and riots in Greece, whose message was diametrically the opposite, tells it all.  Americans were demanding austerity and fiscal responsibility.  The marchers in Greece, London and elsewhere were opposing austerity measures, fighting against the reduction in government provided services and benefits. Our formerly strong and independent-minded allies have succeeded after decades of slipping down the slope of socialistic thinking, in creating an utterly dependent, weakened populace whose only recourse to find wellbeing, health and prosperity, is to demand it of the government. America does not want to go there.

The world’s precarious economic position is complex, but one basic truth, uttered so insightfully by Margaret Thatcher when she said, “the trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money” is being borne out in the American, and European experience. 

So Mr. President, the debt-ceiling battle was not an exercise in unwarranted bi-partisanship and petty bickering. It was the reflection of the depth of opposition to socialism still remaining in the majority of Americans who sent in the reinforcements to Washington last November, and who demanded that our reinforcements oppose your agenda. The gargantuan budget deficits and debt you have amassed, and the tax rates you support, are weapons in the socialist tool box, whose purpose is to further weaken the American free market system and the private sector, to confiscate the wealth created by the hard work of Americans in the past and present generations for your re-distribution designs, and to consolidate power into the hands of the few in Washington, rather than leave it in the hands of the American people.

We will not stand for it.