The self righteous Obama politics

Obama claims the people really want what he wants except as Jay Cost reports:

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Consider:

1. The stimulus bill. The idea behind the bill was to pump some $800 billion into the economy, but the point of entry for that money was largely through core Democratic constituencies. Government unions, trade unions and environmentalists were the most notable beneficiaries.

2. The auto bailout. The president forced the secured creditors of Chrysler to take a haircut while the United Auto Workers won a majority stake in the company.

3. The financial reform bill. The mega-banks like Goldman Sachs pumped tens of millions of dollars into President Obama’s 2008 campaign, and they enjoyed a great return on their investment. The financial reform bill was so watered down that even they ended up endorsing it, and worse, it reinforced their status as too big to fail.

4. Cap and trade. This would have imposed higher energy costs on middle America while handing out tens of billions of dollars in corporate welfare to industrial interests.

5. Health care. To correct the mistakes of Bill Clinton, Team Obama wooed the major health care "stakeholders" (i.e. interest groups) by tailoring the bill to their needs. So hospitals, doctors, the drug companies, the AARP all got special deals. Even the evil insurance companies were on board before they watered down the mandates. And why not? After all, the government was basically forcing all citizens to become their customers whether they wanted to or not. Meanwhile, what about average people? Millions of Americans will see their insurance costs go up, not down, and millions will be forced to change their coverage even if they don’t want to. And just when the budget is about to collapse from the weight of existing entitlements, the president added huge new health obligations!

I believe that Obama believes he is looking out for the public good, but that is merely a testament to his self-righteousness. At the start of Chapter 6 of the Audacity of Hope, he tells a story about a doctor who, after the 2004 Democratic Senate primary, says that he would vote for Obama were it not for the ardently pro-choice rhetoric on his website. After explaining that he did not write the offending words (of course!), Obama recounts how he ordered his staff to take the language down.

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The store is open. That captures the essence of the first half of Obama’s term as much as anything. For two years, Obama and his congressional allies allowed special interest groups to raid the treasury and rewrite the law, all while claiming to be focused only upon the public good. The voters knew better, and tossed the congressional Democrats out on their hides in 2010. And yet today, Obama continues to claim that he – and he alone – is the agent of the public interest while congressional Republicans are standing in his way.

But the reality is that Republicans are doing exactly what the voters sent them to Washington to do – to tell Obama, sorry, but the store is now closed!

The Democrats bought their own demise with their reckless spending on their priorities and not the people's priorities. It is part of their conceit that they could not tell the difference.