Halfway to the midterms

I don’t have much specific to say about the Virginia and New Jersey governor wins for the GOP, other than that I suspect they are positive developments.  I will offer that I find both of the extreme positions—that is, euphoric jubilation on the Republican side and militant apathy and/or disregard on the Democrat side—absurd.

And didn’t you love how Harry Reid, ambitiously plumbing new depths of cluelessness, chose yesterday to strongly hint that there would be no health care legislation passed this year?  Talk about a tin ear for politics.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re halfway to the midterm elections, and hopefully severely hobbling the second half of Obama’s single term.

Year one hasn’t gone well.  Barack Obama is doing a lot of damage.  Already there are really bad laws to repeal, and relationships to repair.  (Latest one of those:  I am seething at him blowing off Angela Merkel’s invitation to attend festivities surrounding the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.)

But it could have been significantly worse.  I wrote of this once before, and I’ll say it again, because I think it’s important:  Obama’s day-to-day political ineptitude is serving a lot of the function of a well-organized opposition.  It was the conventional wisdom a year ago that the Republicans were rudderless, without a clear leader and with principles badly damaged by hypocrisy in power, in some cases severe.

But guess what?  Turns out that once in office, Obama really sucks at building consensus, greasing the wheels, and getting folks nodding.  Who would have guessed that?  Could even the most cynical among us have predicted its degree?  He governs as a petulant urchin, surrounding himself with obsequious thugs and issuing decrees.

Perhaps that’s worked for him in the past.  But the White House isn’t the south side of Chicago.

Quoting Victor Davis Hanson:

What we are witnessing is unique — a hubristic president has misread the reasons for his victory. He sees his win as a mandate to move America hard to the left while caricaturing opponents. The result is a growing popular rejection of Obamism and all that it entails. He may well do for the Left what Jimmy Carter did — if Republicans can return to their principles, clean up their act, and stand for something other than business as usual in Washington.

As usual, VDH nails it.  Last night’s events are potentially promising, but they are the start.  Even more minimally, they are the beginning of the start.  No rest. Obama’s incompetence has been a major factor in getting the pendulum swinging, but all by itself, it won’t get the Republicans much past neutral.

There must be candidates singing the praises of fiscal discipline, limited government, and strong defense.  There must be continued opposition to behemoth power grabs disguised as health care reform, and said opposition must include substantive alternatives.  Let’s keep our esteemed president mired on this one.  He deserves to go down with it.

Keep asking the questions.  Keep up the tea parties.  Keep letting your representatives know what’s going to happen to your vote if they support this nonsense.  Let’s stick Obama with enough to keep him on defense for another year, and then we’ll hang two years of gridlock on him when the Republicans take back Congress.

And finally, three years from now, hopefully we’ll return an adult to the Oval Office.

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