Joe emails:
Once could point to the past year in American politics as a better proof of the existence of God than the ontological proof. Upon inauguration, Obama was in a high earth orbit. The press was as smitten as a teeny bopper with tiger beat pictures of Justin Timberlake on her wall. He had carte blanche to transform America and its foreign policy.
Simultaneously, his two biggest initiatives were a drastic reform of the health care system and a freeze on settlements in Judea and Samaria. Everything else was noise – the stimulus bill was going through because of desperation for government to do something and his apology tour to the world was totally ineffectual and meaningless given the realities of fresh meat muslims to be ground into mince meat.
The health care reform initiative looked to be the Obama achievement that might have enshrined a new entitlement in the American economy and made large swaths of the population dependent on the government and the Democratic party – the party of government. The reform package was derailed twice, in the most curious of ways.
First, at a prime time press conference – Obama sold the package to the American people effectively saying that behind door #1 was the current system, which guaranteed a parade of horribles. Door #2 was reform, and it had to be better. The press was ready to beam that message through and into all orifices of the body public.
Then, at the end of the press conference, a question came about a black harvard professor and a white cop and Obama unleashed on the white cop in favor of a rather bedraggled black professor. For two weeks, the health care train was derailed and significant momentum was lost – many whites lost faith in Obama over this incident. The loss of momentum was critical.
But, undeterred, the House and Senate passed bills that essentially were a slippery slope to nationalized health care. There seemed nothing to stop Obama – and once health care went through and the country learned to love getting cut rate health care at the expense of the next generation (see Medicare and the love affair for that), Obama could push harder on settlements in Judea and Samaria (which he had temporarily backed off on to deal with the domestic issues).
But then came the second derailment. And this one was God’s finger in a much bigger way than the plague of lice in Egypt. The state of Massachusetts sent a Republican to the Senate to replace Ted Kennedy. The “turnabout” here is bigger than the story of Haman being hanged on the very gallows he built for Mordechai.
There has not been a Massachusetts Republican in the Senate since the advent of indoor plumbing. It is simply inconceivable – there is no precedent for such a change in American politics – it was not like this was a gradual shift or that Scott Brown tried to act as a moderate – he campaigned as the antidote to Obama in probably the most liberal state in the Country. The effect of the victory was first, to defeat Obama’s attempt at a permanent domestic entitlement, and, as as a result, second, harm (permanently) his ability to strengthen his hand in foreign affairs and especially his burning desire to harm Israel.
Now, with Obama essentially a lame duck (and the Republican take over of the Congress in November 2010 will lead to him having to fire much of his cabinet and start over), the settlements in Judea and Samaria can continue unabated. All because of an errant remark at a press conference from the most scripted president in history and an election result in Massachusetts, the most politically scripted state in the country.
