NEOAVATARA

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

It is funny how take talk about ‘revolution‘ as meaning armed insurgency.

Although the above quote by our third President actually did mean violent revolution, when politicians and the vast majority of responsible people talk about revolution, they are talking about a transformative political movement…not picking up your rifle and heading for city hall.

But let us thank Barack Obama.  In his vastly overestimated campaign of 2008, he defeated a candidate from the Republicans that was not conservative on most issues.  Actually, the Sen. McCain we have seen in 2009 was far preferable than that of candidate John McCain in 2008…a person willing to stand up for strong ideological belief, without always cowtowing to the middle.  But that is not what we conservatives got last year.  So Mr. Obama, in a year where Republicans faced huge headwinds, defeated a weak moderate who never had his own base.

But, as all political party’s do, Obama and Democrats overstepped their mandate.  Obama’s mandate was quite clear, to me anyway:  to bring different politics to Washington, push bipartisanship, and above all, don’t be a political ideologue.  In all three, he has failed immensely.  You could argue he needs more time on the third, and that maybe in the longterm he won’t be a political ideologue.  But the first two, change in Washington and bipartisanship, Obama has been stumbling from day one, and it will be virtually impossible to achieve those goes.

So instead, the American public got in return the most liberal presidency since Lyndon Baines Johnson. The got a Democratic Party that somehow has fooled itself into believing it had a mandate for a new New Deal.  And it never had those things.

So as always happens when politicians go too far in one direction, there has been pushback.  It started with conservatives, who naturally were always against many of Obama’s old school policy initiatives.  But now, it is a much larger base.  Moderates, independents…and even a few liberals realize that Obama is not the man they presumed him to be.

And thus, a revolution is beginning.  At the heart of the fight is the political center of America.  Fundamentally, is America a center-right nation as Republicans have long believed?  Are we a country that values independence, individual rights, free markets, and freedom from government intrusion?  Or are we a country that is center-left, who believes we can sacrifice a little independence, a little of our individual rights, and limit capitalism in the cause for the greater good?

The polls show us the answer.  That is why Obama’s and Democrat’s poll numbers are plummeting.  It is certainly not falling because of some sudden competence from Republicans.  No, it is the policies of the left that the public is turning against, whether it be health care, fiscal policy, taxes, etc.

Frankly, it comes down to this.  The Death of Reaganism…well, the reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.  Clearly, the Bush Presidency has shown the weakness in the conservative movement.  Bush, and fellow Republicans, frankly forgot to be conservative first, politicians second.  True conservatives would never have supported Bush’s Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, etc.  And no conservative should have accepted Bush’s massive deficit increases. Conservatives also failed to really question the President on his invasion of Iraq, a war I supported and still support.  The debate should have been more vociferous on our side.  But instead, we just followed our leader, to the detriment of our movement.

Reaganism, the belief that you can have limited and competent government, is starting to have a revival.  Ironically, George W. Bush, who thought of himself as a successor the Reagan’s ideals, forgot both the ‘limited’ and ‘competent’ parts of that ideology.  But Obama, in 6 short months, has showed us a glimpse of the bloated incompetent governments of liberal leadership of yesteryear.  And thus, people are looking to what worked.  And what worked were the limited, free market governments of the eighties and nineties.  They were not perfect, but were certainly better than what we currently have:  a government that doesn’t work for its people, and on top of that, is mortgaging our children’s future.

So at the core of the revolution now bubbling and forming slowly in the heart of America is this:  they do not like the direction of America.  They didn’t like the direction that George W. Bush was taking us, and they like Barack Obama’s vision of America just as much.  Yes, they want the government to do its job:  Protect the Homeland.  Regulate markets only as need be, but do a competent job.  And give us the ability to prosper and grow in the greatest country in the world.

What they don’t want is government intrusion.  They understand, inherently, that taxes are just the first step to more government say in our lives.  Sure, liberals can cry about raising taxes on the rich…but the middle class knows that only lasts so long.  With high rising deficits, the middle class will be the next target.  And with health care, the clear call from the public to politicians has been ‘STEP BACK!”.  They want health care reform, but very few people in this society want government to control costs, regulate care, or dictate what you and your doctor do…all things that are necessary to control costs and spending under Obamacare.

Health care is the crucible in which this fight is being fought.  People talk about the public option vs. the free market, but what we are really discussing is the future path of America.  Are we going to have government dictate our path, or individuals?  And how many individual rights are we willing to give up for the greater good?  It is at the core of politics in America, from the days of Alexander Hamlton and Thomas Jefferson.  Politically, not much has changed.  Obama, who appears to be retreating from the public option, has learned an important lesson:  he may believe in many things, but the public is not necessarily with him.  Obama will speak to a joint session of Congress on September 9th, in the hopes that he can resuscitate his health care initiative.  But Obama misses the primary issue; people don’t like what he is proposing.  He has a liberal ideology…but the country is to the right of where he stands.  And if he plans on having a successful presidency, he will have to move to the center, ala Bill Clinton, to have any hopes of longterm success.

So yes, my liberal friends, there is a revolution coming.  It will not be a violent revolution.  It will be an intellectual one.  It is a revolution based on ideas, political and personal.  It is a movement that politicians may use for their own interests, but will not be led by them.  The American public, despite elitists wanting to think otherwise, are as a group a generally wise people.  They understand what they want.   And the battle of ideas will be fierce, as it always is.

Let the battle begin.

........