OPINION:
They say history repeats itself. On July 2, Dave Bossie of Citizens United and writer-director Steve Bannon of Victory Productions began discussing a short “closing argument” video - with a working title called “Bill of Indictment” - for release Oct. 1, about the leftist agenda that, since January 2009, Barack Obama and his Capitol Hill allies have imposed upon unwilling Americans.
On July 2, 1776, 234 years earlier, Thomas Jefferson had just crafted his Declaration of Independence - a bill of indictment on the “Madness of King George III.” (A 1994 film captured that year’s revolution.)
By July 4, “Battle for America” was fully conceptualized, with Dick Morris, Newt Gingrich and Lou Dobbs coming on-board immediately. “We were able to do an 80-minute feature documentary, soup to nuts, in 90 days,” Mr. Bannon said.
But they got lots of help from San Francisco liberal Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and company.
The three-act film, far from preaching to the choir, Mr. Bannon said, is directed at independents and Reagan Democrats. It’s a “Greek tragedy” complete with a Greek chorus, led by Mr. Morris and including Ann Coulter, Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Dobbs and others who guide the audience through a collection of sound-off videos from Mr. Obama and fellow liberals so that, in line with Mr. Bannon’s vision, they are “hoist(ed) with their own petard.”
Their powerfully arrayed words and actions drive home the point that they have executed and presided over the systematic transformation of America into a European socialist state that Americans didn’t vote for and don’t want - including cradle-to-grave health care courtesy of trillions of dollars’ worth of Chinese renminbi and government control of private businesses like GM, reducing American competitiveness and jobs. As many as 100 House Democrats stand to lose their seats because they voted for Obama health care, disapproval of which tops 60 percent in the latest Rasmussen poll.
As a prototypical independent constituent told Rep. Dan Lungren, the California Republican related in the film, “I voted for Barack Obama, but I did not vote for this madness,.”
Ready or not, here comes a second American Revolution.
“We are carpet-bombing this film,” said Mr. Bannon, including this weekend at the 3,000-strong Virginia Tea Party Convention, and “Battle for America” will play at theaters in areas chock-a-block with independents and Reagan Democrats who have had it.
Mr. Morris predicts Nov. 2 will dramatically check Mr. Obama’s “madness.”
Asked if Mr. Obama may be crazy like a fox, fancying himself like Bill “Clinton the Triangulator,” Mr. Morris told me, “He might try to, but our politics [have] moved so far to the left that what used to be the right is now the center.” No tax increases, no social engineering on health care, no state bailouts with federal money are all “centrist” positions now. “So, I think he’ll try to move from what used to be the left to what used to be the center. But, that will only mean moving from the extreme left to the far left.”
All of which means he’s got a way to go before he reaches the sane center, promising what Mr. Morris believes will be an earthquake on Nov. 2.
Mary Claire Kendall is a Washington-based writer.
Correction: An earlier version of this column, misattributed the quote, “”I voted for Barack Obama, but I did not vote for this madness.” The statement was made by a constituent of Mr. Lungren.
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