07.10
What Exactly Do Conservatives Expect?
It seems like when you turn on talk radio these days, you’re constantly hearing things like “When are people going to wake up and get outraged?” Or “When are the American people going to get fed up with all these bailouts and government tyranny?” I’m sure you’ve heard this kind of thing too. But I have a simple question. What exactly are they expecting? And, I’m talking details here. What does a scenario where people “wake up” and “get outraged” look like exactly? Street violence? Protests? Calling a bunch of congressmen en mass? Somebody please clarify this for me. If they are calling for something particular, how about somebody start spelling it out and give some details. Otherwise, I’d like them to please shut up. All it does to hear that kind of whiny talk is make people frustrated. The problem is, they can’t give any details because they don’t know what to do about it any more than anyone else does.
The bottom line on “stopping” the Federal government from frog-marching over our freedom is that we can’t right now. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to go all Mad Max with street violence because Congress passed a cap and tax bill that makes my house harder to sell. At the end of the day I would be in jail, my kids would have no father and my house would be taken away from my wife and kids. Why would I or anyone else do that to themselves. They won’t. Movements by a people against government don’t happen without two things: momentum and mass. Both of those things happen to be building on their own at the moment. Obama’s approval numbers have dropped to a fresh new low today:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 30% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-eight percent (38%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -8. The President’s Approval Index rating has fallen six points since release of a disappointing jobs report last week (see trends).
Thirty-nine percent (39%) now give the President good or excellent marks for handling the economy while 43% say he is doing a poor job. Those are by far his lowest ratings yet on the economy…
That approval index of -8 marks a huge and steady decline. That is momentum. Public sentiment has a way of feeding on itself, and the economy is like a train in that it’s very hard to stop it when it’s going in a certain direction. It’s going to continue to decline for a long time as people are forced to adapt to what the market is throwing at them. Things like cap and tax and the upcoming healthcare legislation are going to make employers very afraid to hire in those sectors, and those sectors are enormous. We still haven’t seen the full shakeout from the auto industry layoffs and dealer closings yet. August is not going to be pretty.
There still isn’t enough mass to make Obama and Congress pause yet though. As more and more liberals begin to slowly accept the fact that their dream government is doing things that directly hurt them and take away their freedoms they are going to silently jump on board. You will never hear from those people publicly. They are the people who will go into the voting booth next November and pull the lever for a Republican or and Indpendent and never say much about it. They are the ones that will get out of the car one night and pull the “Obama/Biden 2008″ sticker off their car without fanfare.
Bottom line: It takes time to get 300 million people headed in a different direction. There isn’t going to be some mass uprising, and I don’t think that would be wise anyway. That’s a stupid thing to wish for. If Obama announces tommorrow that he is confiscating all private property then yes. I’ll meet you in the street with my guns and baseball bat. But that isn’t going to happen. What is going to happen is that he and Congress will continue down their current path of a little here and a little there. And all the while he will be making more and more people angry at every turn.
I think Obama is going to wake up one morning in the coming weeks and his approval numbers will be in the 40’s. At that point things are going to get very difficult for him. Congressmen will start bailing out on him to save their own skin in 2010. His reaction to that circumstance will be very interesting. Will he pull a Clinton and start a military action to get his approval numbers back up? Will there be some convenient media distraction that came out of nowhere? I guess it’s just wait and see. But, stop dreaming of some kind of mass revolt or some such thing. If one is ever required, you’ll know it. That’s just not the case yet. I don’t like any of this any more than anyone else, but I like violence and threats to my family even less. Let’s be a little more realistic please.
