President Obama thinks he is terribly clever but he is terribly mistaken.
Although he is vacationing with his family on Martha’s Vineyard this week he has been barnstorming the country, campaigning for Democrats (and his own agenda) in the November elections, using a misbegotten metaphor. He says the country needs to keep the car (the economy) in the D gear (Democrat) to drive it out of the ditch (aka the recession) and that switching the car into the R gear (Republican) would just put the car back into the ditch.
In his enthusiasm about how effective and memorable he thinks his metaphor is, Obama neglects a different option for the car: kick it into overdrive.
The overdrive gear in a car provides the choice of a higher speed with more fuel efficiency and less torque.
The country is ready to switch gears in November’s midterm elections because voters now think that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to figure out how to put the economy into overdrive so it can quit stalling.
A recent Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey “ shows voters trust Republicans more by a 48% to 39% margin on the economy.” Another Rasmussen survey “finds that 48% of likely voters would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate, while 36% would opt for his or her Democratic opponent. This is the biggest lead the GOP has held in over a decade of Rasmussen Reports surveying.”
Voters now believe that Obama sold the country a lemon. His presidential campaign’s “hope and change” agenda has turned out to be a hype and chicanery agenda that confiscates taxpayers’ cash for policies that are clunkers.
Rasmussen has discovered that just 26% of voters “think Obama shares the same political views they have.” It adds that, “nearly two-out-of-three U.S. voters (65%) remain at least somewhat angry at the current policies of the federal government, including 40% who are very angry.” Also, “most voters believe the Democratic congressional agenda is extreme while a plurality describe the Republican agenda as mainstream.” No wonder Obama’s job approval in several national polls is at or close to its all-time low.
The mainstream Republican agenda consists of a philosophy that says “less” to every “more” from Obama and the Democrats. Republicans are fighting for less big government control, less spending, less taxes and less bureaucracy. They want less interference by the public sector in the private sector—less imposition of government’s power over choice, competition and spending by free individuals in a free market. Satirist P.J. O’Rourke’s metaphor is apt : “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
There’s a reason Obama went from resembling a muscle car as a presidential candidate to resembling a wreck on the highway as a president. He is burning out our car—our economy—by repeatedly pulling the emergency brake. He insists that every issue is an emergency or “crisis” justifying urgent passage of his legislation and policies. He is over-steering the country to the left.
Obama’s overspending, overtaxing, over-regulating and overextending the national debt and deficit have put the nation on the road to insolvency rather than the road to recovery. America is suffering from low employment, low growth, low business development, low innovation, low competition, and low certainty about the future. No one knows the full potential for Obama’s passed and proposed policies to harm the economy. This is producing low “animal spirits” (low investor and consumer confidence). That is choking economic recovery.
There’s another “D” lever on the steering column that the president forgot in his car metaphor. It’s the “directional signal,” for turning left or right—either away or toward a shift back to mainstream economic development policies and a recovery.
We’ll find out which way voters want the country to turn, on Election Day.
Communications consultant Jon Kraushar is at www.jonkraushar.net.
Fox News Opinion is on Twitter. Follow us @fxnopinion.
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