OPINION:
Is President Obama painting himself into a corner by expecting a bad economy when voters go to the polls next November? His campaign team has announced in the New York Times that its strategy for next year is to go negative. Mr. Obama’s strategists have warned that, whoever the Republican nominee is, they intend to say it was that nominee’s party that led to the economic problems we face. That raises an important question: If the economy were doing well right now, would the president be giving Republicans the credit?
Likewise, now he is on record saying that if his latest jobs (spending) bill doesn’t pass Congress, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives is to blame for the bad economy, or at least the part of the bad economy that he isn’t blaming on former President George W. Bush. But if the economy improves over the next 11 months, the Republican candidate for president can run on the argument that Congress’ recalcitrance stopped Mr. Obama’s policies and made the economy better.
In fact, if Republicans had any moxie, they would ask Mr. Obama this question: If the Republican-controlled House was able to stop you from fixing the economy, why didn’t the Democratic-controlled House stop Mr. Bush from wrecking it, as you claim he did?”
Such questions can undo Mr. Obama’s campaign strategy because it is a poorly rigged contraption that is mostly dependent upon the mainstream media’s support being equal to or greater than it was in 2008. It is secondarily dependent on a weak Republican candidate who will seek opacity instead of clarity when it comes to explaining the difference between what the political left believes and what conservatives believe. We frequently hear and read that presidential elections are won with votes from the middle that flow to the most moderate candidate. There was only one moderate running for president in 2008, and he was beaten by a left-wing extremist, so someone should explain how nominating a moderate and running to the middle wins an election. This is not the time for Republicans to run to the center, where the political establishment tells us the votes are. This is a time for bold statements that clarify our national purpose while appealing to the logic of voters and exposing the fraud of the Democrats’ strategy of having people who take from the system decide how to spend the money of people paying for the system.
Republicans can start by explaining to previously inattentive voters that all they hear about conservatives from the media and Democrats is a lie. They are told by the left that success equates with greed and hope that no one notices that their schemes to redistribute wealth always end with more power for them and less freedom for everyone else (except for members of the political class, who have the final say over who gets what). A close inspection will reveal that politicians use the word “greed” as a weapon to gain power while robbing people of their rights to liberty and property. Power is the goal of Washington’s political princes.
The lesson of recent elections is that we cannot keep voting for moderate Republicans. We can’t send moderates to negotiate with left-wing extremists in the Democratic Party. The net effect is the gradual destruction of the republic. All we have gotten from electing moderates as we are told are solutions too small to fix the problems the left creates. For every pound of liberal destruction, we get eight ounces of repairs, if that, from our side. We are told that we are not allowed to use words like “socialism” to describe the socialists in the Democratic Party because that drives away independent voters, yet they call us names like “Nazis” and “fascists” while we call them “our good friends and colleagues.” Then they win elections with a highly unpopular ideology. Poll after poll shows that 40 percent of Americans identify themselves as conservative, while 20 percent identify themselves as liberal, and yet our Republican establishment tells us we must compromise.
Sending moderates to negotiate with the far left has done enormous damage not only to the nation’s economy, but to the very idea of free-market economics. Compromise on everything from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to tax increases and regulation of the markets has led to disaster. Instead of the left being blamed after negotiating us out of our freedom for the past 100 years, capitalism gets blamed. So when we nominate the candidate the establishment tells us we must in order to win, we lose every time. They get most of what they want, and conservatives and capitalism get all the blame for the failures of those compromises.
Mr. Obama’s campaign strategy is to blame the bad economy on Republicans, but he can be defeated by conservatives putting his leftist ideology on trial in this election and explaining how it brought the economy to its knees. But first, Republicans have to acknowledge that it was weak Republicans - in the interest of compromise - who allowed too much liberal poison to choke a once-strong and free economy.
Scott Wheeler is a former television producer and author of “Shadow Government: What Obama Doesn’t Want You to Know About His Czars” (Capitol Media Group, 2010). He also is founder of the National Republican Trust PAC.
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