Matthias Reynolds, who blogs at AmericaAdNauseam.blogspot.com has this thought-provoking piece at American Thinker. It’s not a terribly lengthy piece, so here it is in full:
The past two weeks have featured at least three violations of President Obama’s promise to limit the influence of lobbyists within the executive branch. Despite all this, Robert Gibbs maintains that “The policy we have is the strongest that any administration in the history of our country has had.” Putting aside Gibb’s obvious nonsense, you might be left wondering how an administration so unparalleled in “brain power” (to quote George Stephanopoulos) could act so unwisely. I believe the answer is simple, they think that people will forget. They are counting on the short memory of the American voter. Sound cynical? Maybe, but some of us are not so quick to forget. Some will remember. I will remember.
It is not the only thing I will remember either. I will remember Speaker Pelosi’s idea of immediate stimulus being a decrease in human population, evidenced by the hundreds of millions of dollars she supported including in the stimulus for family planning services. I will remember all the other wasteful spending and pork that has no place in an immediate stimulus plan, such as the $200 million for sod on the National Mall, $44 million for a facelift to the exterior of the Department of Agriculture, and the $5.2 billion headed for the Community Development Block Grants, a chief financier of ACORN. I will remember and be thankful that as of this moment, no Republican has voted for the package and that a similar scenario is likely in the Senate.
I will not forget the reckless steps President Obama has taken with regard to the War on Terror. I will remember his executive orders to defang the war on terror by closing Gitmo and CIA Black Sites. And I will not forget his appointment of Leon Panetta to the CIA, a man who has no experience in the intelligence field and whose only qualification seems to be his opinion on what does and does not constitute torture.
I will also remember what the President thinks of me. I will remember what he said in San Francisco about rural voters when he believed his comments were being made in private. I will remember being lectured about the importance of understanding Jeremiah Wright’s comments in context and Obama’s twenty year relationship with a racist that no white man could ever have and retain public office.
And while it’s now considered an anachronism to be aware of the threat of radical Islam, I will remember that it still exists. I will remember 9/11. I will remember the leadership of former President Bush and his justified and necessary invasion of Iraq. I will remember how the far left treated our former president and their mindless comparisons of him to fascist dictators. I will remember what they would like me to forget.
If the GOP wants to recover, it will need to remember as well. It must explain why the stimulus will result in failure and bloated government. The GOP must understand that it is a broad tent and despite what the Peggy Noonans and the Georgetown cocktail party crowd say, the full strength of the conservative spectrum will be required to face the juggernaut the Democrats have created. They must remember the folly of putting forward candidates that are pro-amnesty, pro-bailout, and anti-free market. They must realize that they still live in a center-right nation, a nation that still largely sees the government as the problem and not the answer.
Republicans must remember and learn from a key mistake of the Bush administration. Too often Bush was content with letting history be his final judge. Ultimately, this is the case with many presidents, but it was not wise to merely leave it at that when full throated and compelling policy defense could and should have been made to the American people. Letting the opposition define him is what led to his abysmal approval rating. If you let someone lie long and loudly and long enough without opposition, people will regard it as reality.
Republicans must remember to do what they can to control and shape the perception of what is happening. If President Obama and his cohorts continue with their reckless appointments, dangerous executive orders and out of control spending Republicans may just remember who they are and what they stand for. I know I do.
Great piece. Consider me a non-forgetting elephant.
AT reader “Iago” made the following comment:
Every generation of students is indoctrinated anew in Marxist ideology, reinforced, at least until recently, by the MSM, which is now collapsing under it’s burdensome Marxist ideology and its lack of capitalistic ability and integrity.
The American public has so little memory of its founding values and recent history that Marxist regularly fail and then rename themselves without consequence:
* During the Great Depression and before, Marxists regularly ran for office as Communists and Socialists. They lost.
* In 1948, Marxists ran Henry Wallace for president under the hi-jacked Progressive banner. They lost.
* Not being able to win as Communists, or Socialists, or Progressives, the Marxists then hi-jacked the Liberal label and did somewhat better, but still lost.
* Marxists so damaged the Liberal brand that they have recently reverted to calling themselves Progressives again, with no understanding of the irony and no reaction from the voters. They won, not on their Marxist ideology but on charisma, a vastly over-rated characteristic. Lenin and Hitler had charisma.
The defining characteristics of Marxism are functional inefficiency and institutional corruption. That is what we are seeing in the early days of the Obama adminitration, and that will be the downfall of Marxism in America.
While “Iago” makes some interesting points, I just hope that the American rejection of the Marxist brand of liberalism has really occurred. I am beginning to believe that our ignorant and forgetful public don’t have a problem with Marxism, either because they never learned what real Marxism is, or because whatever they perceive Marxism to be they consider a good idea.
When I was an apolitical young skull full of mush--right when the USSR was collapsing in 1990-91, I took a Poli Sci course called Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. We had to read Marx and Engels and I remember distinctly thinking, These guys have some really good things to say. It just isn’t fair! Why shouldn’t the playing field be made level, by any means necessary?
Of course, since then, I grew up a lot. But today I have liberal Bush-hating, Obama-worshiping relatives who have actually have no problem with Marxism, socialism, or whatever you want to call it. They have no problem with gov’t takeovers of banks and corporations. They have no problem with taxing the wealthy to death for the sole purpose of redistributing it to the less wealthy.
In sum, I used to have Iago’s position that the Democrats won because they have “dressed up” Marxism under some other catchy name or sold it with the tactic of charisma. But now I’m not worried about the public’s ignorance of Marxism/socialism/etc., it’s their endorsement of it that keeps me fear for my young children’s future.
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