Published: November 07, 2009 05:10 pm      

Back from the brink

By Kelly Young

Guest Columnist

Last November, when Barack Obama was elected president by a considerable margin, many liberal pundits took advantage of the occasion to gleefully announce the demise of American conservatism. They saw the appointment of a leftist president and a widened Democratic majority in both houses of Congress as a death knell for the Republican Party — if not permanently, then at least for a very long time.

Yet in a quirk of fate, Obama’s atrocious mishandling of his first year in office has been so profound that his lasting legacy may well turn out to be the galvanization of his ideological foils. The Right Wing he was prophesized to quash is now resurgent, and a country that was supposedly done with conservatism is now becoming more and more disenfranchised with Obama’s big government solutions to every problem.

The newest Gallup poll on political ideology shows that 40 percent of Americans describe themselves as conservatives, compared to 36 who self-identify as moderates and 20 percent who call themselves liberals. According to Gallup, this is the first time American conservatives have outnumbered moderates since 2004. That the nation would collectively turn towards the right during Obama’s watch is deliciously ironic, considering the messianic popularity he enjoyed not so long ago.

Had Obama done the politically prudent thing, which would have been to take one or two moderate steps toward his dream of a socialistic utopia, he very possibly would have succeeded in getting those initiatives passed while retaining the good will of the nation. Instead, his ham-fisted bulldozing of capitalism has drawn the ire not only of conservatives, but also of many who had previously been politically apathetic.

A very telling illustration of conservatism on the up-swing is the fact that, for the first time in a long time, polling results show that likely voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 key electoral issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen.

Health care, education, social security, taxes, economy, abortion, immigration, national security, Iraq and government ethics. All trending away from the party in power.

And the president himself is already in some pretty hot water with likely voters. Obama entered office with a Presidential Approval Index of +28 — that’s the percentage of people who strongly disapprove of the president’s job performance subtracted from the percentage of those who strongly approve.

Since January, Obama’s figures have belly-flopped in impressive fashion. The president has now sported a PAI in the negative double-digits for 19 of the last 22 days. Today, 37 percent of poll respondents strongly disapprove of the president’s job performance while only 29 strongly approve, for a PAI of -8.

What the president, his wife, his long-time pastor and the rest of the liberal cabal don’t understand is that most Americans still love America. And the nation is inherently conservative because of that.

At its core, the conservative agenda is about the cultivation of those principles which have served as the foundation for America’s greatness since its inception — the free market, limited government, Christian values and personal responsibility. These are the concepts that were so dear to the Founding Fathers at the birth of our nation. The liberal docket on the other hand is bent instead on the dismantling and reforming of America into a nanny state which is wholly secular and subject to complete governmental dominion.

Tuesday’s gubernatorial results, wherein the people of Virginia and New Jersey selected Republican leadership, highlight just how greatly exaggerated the reports of conservatism’s death have been. The outcomes are especially troubling for Democrats because Virginia has widely been viewed as a purple state gone blue since the 2008 election, and New Jersey has been an archetypical Democratic state for a long time.

The year 2010 will be a phenomenal one for the GOP, especially if Democrats in Congress turn an ambivalent ear toward the majority of Americans and force through the public option. Moderate voters are angry for the first time in recent memory, and politicians who show in the coming months that they can’t represent the values of their constituents will soon find themselves on the sidelines. Many moderate Democrats who have skated by in conservative districts will see their luck run out in the next round of elections.

Rush Limbaugh thinks a conservative revolution is coming in 2010 and 2012 regardless of whether the GOP is able to produce a solid candidate who unites the base and can draw moderates into the fold.

While it is unlikely the Republicans can keep Obama from a second term without a viable candidate of their own, there is little question that come election-time there will be a sizeable segment of the electorate who will be casting a vote against Obama instead of for anyone in particular.

Which amounts to an incredible turn of events when one considers that Obama — who was elected largely because he ran as the anti-Bush candidate — has lost so much political capital in one year that his 2012 opponent is already picking up votes for no other reason than being the anti-Obama candidate.

While the president has spent much of his first year laying the blame for America’s deepening woes on his predecessor, after substantial political gains are made by Republicans in 2010 and 2012, Obama will have no one to blame but himself.



Kelly Young is a former reporter for the Jacksonville Daily Progress.