Columnist.
We must reject President Obama's death verdict on America's future. It is ailing under his policies, but it is not too late; it will recover. Obama ran on a platform of unmitigated optimism -- a promise to usher in a brighter day for America. But there could hardly be a greater contrast between his pledge and his performance in office, between his commitment to the nation and his current abandonment of all hope. He has breached his contract with the electorate and must be fired. It isn't just that Obama's policies have failed; it's that he has essentially given up and is asking us to accept a lesser America going forward, as if resigned to the fatalistic belief that America has begun an inevitable and unavoidable decline.
I am pumped up about Mitt Romney's speech in Israel -- for both political reasons and policy ones -- and believe it may represent a turning point in the campaign. Politically -- and this is important because it is critical that he win, or he won't be able to implement any policies and set America back on the road to recovery -- Romney has shown again he is going to take the gloves off, deal with the issues directly and draw a stark contrast between his policies and Obama's record. The significance of this cannot be overstated. Some of the reasons John McCain lost in 2008 were his lackluster campaign, his refusal to showcase Obama's extreme liberalism and, thus, his failure to demonstrate why he would make a better president than Obama.
Obama's desperate protests that his anti-business rant was taken out of context are betrayed both by that very context and because they are a part of a piece -- just one more component of his war against the American entrepreneurial spirit. He would have us believe that his words "you didn't build that" referred to roads and bridges and not businesses. Given his accompanying statements -- "you didn't get there on your own," etc. -- that is an absurd construction. But even if that's what he meant, why would he have felt compelled to point out that businesses don't succeed without access to roads and bridges? Do roads and bridges not connect the population to failed businesses? Why would any American president be inclined to think or talk this way? Of course governments -- funded by individual and business revenues, by the way -- build the roads and bridges, to successful and failed businesses.
When a radio host asked me what I thought of the massacre in Aurora, Colo., I had to ask for clarification. I said: "What do you mean? Who could deny it's an unspeakable tragedy?" What he was really asking me was to address it in a political context. The problem is that I don't believe there was any political context to the shooting; not everything is political. But unfortunately, elements of the left seemed determined to graft political implications onto the event, irrespective of the absence of any factual basis for doing so. They seized on it both to demonize grass-roots conservatives and to pump new life into their perennial campaign against the Second Amendment.
Someone recently asked me what campaign advice I would give Mitt Romney if I were in his inner circle. Let me respond. First, let me say that though I have been concerned that Romney has not been aggressive enough to date, we have begun to see a different side of him in the past few days. In response to Obama's indefensibly derogatory statements about business, Romney bolted out of his chair and delivered a spirited defense of entrepreneurship and the American spirit. It was an exceedingly welcome and gratifying development and one that I hope signals a new chapter in his unfolding campaign. Perhaps Romney is more of a counterpuncher than a puncher, but I would respectfully urge him not to wait anymore for Obama to draw first blood. He needs to take the offense and keep Obama so busy defending his abysmal record on so many fronts that he doesn't have time to administer his ad hominem and disgraceful attacks on Romney's experience with Bain Capital, his alleged outsourcing or his rightly earned wealth -- not to mention spurious, despicable charges that he's a felon.
If I didn't know better, I might conclude that President Obama is trying to validate my book. His personal attacks on Mitt Romney have been so harsh that Romney called them "beneath the dignity of the presidency." Not only did I devote several chapters to documenting Obama's practice of bullying and attacking his political opponents but my final chapter, uncannily, details Obama's "War on the Dignity of His Office." Having presided over 41 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent and possessing no arrows in his economic quiver besides deficit spending and raising taxes, it's not surprising Obama continues to resort to these gutter tactics. What finally drew Romney's ire was Obama's accusing Romney of committing a felony and then Obama's refusing to apologize. This is simply Chicago Thug Politics 101. President Obama's favorite whipping boy, President George W. Bush, would have never stooped to this level. Even in the face of brutal, scurrilous attacks, Bush refused to diminish the dignity of the office.
So what about the GOP House vote to repeal that legislative monstrosity that masquerades under the misleading title of "Affordable Care Act"? Was the vote more than symbolic? Will the vote have any impact on the presidential and congressional races? What about the GOP proposals to replace Obamacare? A host presented those three questions, and I'd like to address them more thoroughly than the time permitted on television. I don't believe that the GOP repeal vote was merely symbolic, even though everyone knows that the obstructionist Democratic Senate, which hasn't produced a budget for more than 1,100 days, will reject it out of hand. The House vote to repeal, which included 5 Democratic votes, helps to frame a critically important issue in the 2012 presidential and congressional campaigns, which is also true of the House's passage of "cut, cap and balance" and Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan, "The Path to Prosperity."
During my book "tour," radio hosts are forever asking me whether I believe that Obama is intentionally attempting to destroy America. It's a fair question, especially given the title of my book and because so many people legitimately believe he is. I have never been too receptive to conspiracy theories, and I'm not particularly enamored of ones circulating about Obama. But unlike many other such theories, this one is about a truly unprecedented assault on the American idea and on those first principles that have made America the unique experiment in constitutional governance that it has been. Ordinary people -- not just a small fringe group of zealots -- are really afraid today. They see the country they adore being attacked at all levels; they see their freedoms under assault, their life savings genuinely in jeopardy, an endlessly anemic economy, a longer period of sustained unemployment than we've experienced in a half-century and a national financial crisis, born of world-historic national debt, that this president will not help avert.
Recently, White House senior adviser David Plouffe made a comment that didn't receive the scrutiny it deserves. The statement demands attention because it frames President Obama's re-election campaign theme and illustrates how grounded in disinformation the theme is. Apart from Team Obama's formidable community organizing skills aimed at demonizing Mitt Romney as a wealthy, compassionless corporate raider, Obama has nothing but lies and scapegoating to run on, given his abysmal record. Plouffe said that Republicans "want to return us back to the same policies that caused the recession -- huge tax cuts for the wealthy, more war, more debt." You have to give these people credit for chutzpah and for relentlessly staying on message, as warped as it is.
As we approach the Fourth of July and contemplate its glorious significance, recent events have brought into sharp relief the precarious condition of America's unique liberty tradition. Our Constitution is the best written guarantor of human liberty in human history, but its safeguards do not make it completely bulletproof against systematic assaults undermining its integrity. In a little more than three years in office, President Obama has distinguished himself as the Great Destroyer of our liberties through a comprehensive set of policies that are at war with the American idea and are succeeding in fundamentally transforming America, in fulfillment of Obama's promise. Just in the past few weeks, we've witnessed multiple body blows against our freedoms, in areas ranging from immigration to "Fast and Furious" to Obamacare to the economy to race relations to state sovereignty to our very social compact itself.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Obamacare v. the United States of America is yet another body blow to the U.S. Constitution's principle of limited government and the freedom tradition, but there is a major upside. Despite President Obama's opposition to an individual mandate when he was debating Hillary Clinton during the Democratic presidential primaries and despite his postelection insistence that Obamacare's mandate does not constitute a tax, his lawyers insisted otherwise, and the Supreme Court bought it. So we have a law with enormous reach -- one-seventh to one-sixth of the economy -- having been fundamentally misrepresented to the American people from the beginning. Conservatives who believe that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the plain meaning of its language and the original intent of the Framers have long been troubled by the court's decisions expanding the commerce clause to authorize Congress to regulate the most local of matters within a state's borders.
One advantage of defeating Barack Obama in November, apart from saving the country from financial ruin and the rest, is that conservatives will presumably be able to criticize liberal policies again without automatically being accused of racism. These charges aren't just emanating from the fringe groups; they're not just being uttered by radical leftist bloggers or Occupy Wall Street zealots. They are no longer the exclusive province of race hustlers whose professional careers depend on stirring up animosity among racial groups. In August 2011, the level of polarization seemed to reach a fever pitch, when Congressional Black Caucus Whip Andre Carson said, "Some of them in Congress right now with this tea party movement would love to see you and me ... hanging on a tree." Just a week or so ago, no less a mainstream media figure than former ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson wrote, "Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there -- they oppose him not for his policies and political view but for who he is, an African American!"
Few principles are more important to our constitutional scheme than the separation of powers, which is precisely why President Obama's bogus assertion of executive privilege to thwart Congress' investigation into Fast and Furious is so inexcusable. Executive privilege is an important safeguard against congressional overreach and to preserve the separation of powers. The inherent right of the executive to protect highly sensitive information has long been recognized, and the privilege was judicially established during the Watergate era. As such, Congress should not go on fishing expeditions against a president to score political points. But neither should a president assert the privilege to obstruct a legitimate investigation when there appears to be no colorable claim to the privilege. This trivializes the privilege and the separation of powers it is designed to protect. Legal experts agree that the privilege applies to communications to which the president or an adviser acting on his behalf is a party. But they disagree about whether it applies to internal communications within executive agencies when neither the president nor his representative were involved in those communications.
As disturbing as was President Obama's lawless usurpation of constitutional authority in circumventing the DREAM Act to grant backdoor amnesty, this type of overreach is nothing new for him. He has frequently complained about how democracy and the Constitution are "messy" and do not permit him to exercise the authority of a Chinese president. But he nevertheless warned us that he would be pushing forward with his agenda through executive orders and administrative actions "on a wide range of fronts." But he has outdone himself this time, even going beyond limitations he freely recognized not long ago, when he complained that he didn't have the authority to impose his immigration policy wish list. Perhaps recent polling numbers showing him trailing Mitt Romney have increased his desperation. His frontal assaults on the Constitution are so brazen now it's hard not to conclude that he was willing to take a calculated risk that his excesses would offend fewer rule of law sticklers than they would attract Hispanic voters.
I saw it with my own eyes on a video clip that Sean Hannity played. At a speech in Baltimore, President Obama laughingly dismissed the notion that he is responsible for our nation's current spending orgy. Seriously. Sporting a wide grin, Obama said, "I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits." He must think this subject is a real knee-slapper. He continued: "I inherited a trillion-dollar deficit. We had a surplus; they turned it into a deficit, built in a structural deficit that extends for decades. ... We signed $2 trillion in spending cuts into law. I laid out a detailed plan for a total of $4 trillion in deficit reduction. ... But even when you account for the steps we took to prevent a depression and jump-start the economy ... spending under my administration has grown more slowly than under any president in 60 years." A fascinating question is whether Obama actually believes this fantasy or he and his disciples are laughing at us, as well.
President Obama continues to prove how out of touch he is with the plight of the American people under his anemic economy. No, Mr. President, the economy and the private sector are not "doing fine." Sure, Obama is pretending that he didn't mean it the way it sounded. But I am not buying that it was a gaffe. I watched the video, and he stated the point clearly and deliberately. Obama is an incorrigible leftist ideologue who believes that only his statist policies can stimulate the national economy. He thinks that without the prodding, deficit spending and wisdom of the federal government, the private sector cannot recover on its own, much less flourish. Now he has put his theories to the test, having run up unprecedented national debt in the process and producing nothing but failure. Even President Franklin D. Roosevelt's treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau admitted that FDR had spent a record amount of federal money for eight years and had amassed extraordinary debt without creating jobs or stimulating the economy. Why can't Obama learn from his own mistakes?
On my book "tour" to promote my new book, "The Great Destroyer," hosts keep asking me to explain how President Obama can maintain high personal approval ratings when his policies are unpopular and his record is abysmal. I first want to challenge the underlying assumption. I don't believe that President Obama is as well-liked or, at this point, even as likable as he is reputed to be. He hasn't behaved in office as a person most would consider "likable." Assuming these polls are being accurately reported, I tend to think that many people are responding favorably to the question of whether they like Obama personally largely because the media narrative has been and remains that he is likable. When the media keep pounding us with the notion that he is likable, people may fear they are revealing their own personal failings if they confess that they aren't particularly fond of him. It could make them look out of step or expose them as negative people.
My newly released book, "The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic," picks up where my previous book "Crimes Against Liberty" left off, chronicling President Obama's record since mid-2010, and it's not pretty. I firmly believe that Obama is heading this nation toward financial catastrophe, is greatly undermining our national defenses, the Constitution and the rule of law, is severely damaging our energy industry and our energy independence, is dangerously expanding government and smothering the private sector and small and large businesses, and is polarizing this nation in a way that we haven't seen in many decades, along racial, gender and economic lines.
The gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin next week is important as an imperfect test case to indicate how Democratic propaganda will work against facts this election year. Liberals are usually the ones who arrogantly throw around the charge that Republicans and conservatives are fact- and science-challenged and averse to reality. But their claim itself is based on nothing but their generic, nonfactual presuppositions, whether on "climate change" or same-sex unions.
Has President Obama's disrespectful attitude toward the United States Supreme Court caused a trickledown effect among the Democratic leadership in Congress, or was Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy's recent invective against Chief Justice John Roberts self-generated? You will recall that in April, President Obama launched a salvo against the court about a pending case -- concerning Obamacare -- seeking to either intimidate the justices into upholding the law or lay a foundation for political criticism should they strike it.
