Sequestration is the New Bush

Ever since 2001, liberals told us that anything that ever went wrong was the fault of George W. Bush.  Every time the stock market ticked down for a day, it was Bush’s fault.  Every time a Democrat lost their job, Bush was to blame.  Every time a liberal was forced to stop for a red light, they cursed Bush.  There was literally no misfortune a liberal could not lay at the foot of the 43rd president.

This continued into the Obama years, and was in fact a large part of what helped the inexperienced community organizer get elected.  Despite the economic disaster of the housing bubble being a Democrat-manufactured crisis, liberal politicians and media personalities managed to assign blame squarely to George W. Bush and the Republicans, because Bush was still in office in 2008.

The fact that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were in firm control of the House and Senate after 2006 while Bush was essentially a lame duck who ceded power to the other party was entirely irrelevant to the picture the Democrats managed to paint.

When Barack Obama sought the White House in 2008, he did not set out to beat John McCain, but instead ran a campaign against George W. Bush.  It did not seem to connect with the American public that Bush was on his way out of office regardless of whether the Republicans or Democrats won the election, and McCain had spent far more time hindering Bush and being critical of him than he had spent advancing any Republican agenda.  McCain was regarded as a relatively popular war hero and POW, whereas the entire media wing of the Democrat Party had spent the past eight years casting Bush as a bumbling, incompetent war criminal.  There was no question which politician Obama would rather run against.

But Obama did not stop his rhetoric against Bush once the election was over.  Rather than buckling down and assuming responsibility, he began a series of maneuvers ranging from the passage of Obamacare to massive stimulus spending, all of which could only succeed in making economic conditions worse than they already were.  And all the while, he kept reminding the public that George W. Bush was the man to blame.

By invoking Bush as a demonic force of evil and the source of all our problems, Obama could take any action and escape any blame by reminding the public of his predecessor.  When Obama demanded new government spending, it was something that had to be done to correct the failures of Bush.  When Obama’s policies resulted in worsening economic conditions, it was because we were still feeling the effects of the damage Bush had left for Obama to inherit.  In fact, things would have been much worse if Obama had not stepped in to limit the damage (so liberals say).

Depending on economic reports and additional circumstances, Bush was a card Obama could pull out whenever he needed and then put away again when he was done with him.  When Obama wanted the country to think he was making a difference, he would claim he had already turned things around.  But when things got worse, he would claim we were still experiencing the depression brought on by the previous administration.  In June of any given year, a surprising uptick in economic indicators would be heralded by Democrats as a sign Obama’s policies were working and we were on the road to recovery.  A month later, negative economic news would be blamed on “the mess Obama inherited from Bush,” and the previous month was forgotten.

We have experienced a “summer of recovery” virtually every year since Obama took office, according to their own timely reports, and yet we still have not found a way to reverse the downward economic spiral which was present throughout Obama’s entire first term.

Obama assured us early in his presidency that he was going to fix the economy, and went so far as to promise that if he did not do so, he would be a one-term president.  Of course, neither of those things happened; the economy only got worse and Obama was reelected anyway.

Exit polling in 2012 showed that a majority of voters still blamed Bush rather than Obama for the condition of the economy four years later.  And why wouldn’t they?  That message was all they had heard from the president and his media lapdogs since 2008.  With four years of complete failure under his belt, Obama managed to evade the blame entirely by sticking to his mantra that everything was Bush’s fault.

The only thing Bush escaped blame for in the first term of Obama’s presidency was the untimely demise of Osama bin Laden.  Obama was graciously willing to shoulder the responsibility for that one.

In the aftermath of the election, Republicans have begun to question how much longer Obama can get away with this, and I even asked the question three weeks ago of whether history might forget Obama ever had been president after his eight years in office.  Could he possibly serve two entire terms while blaming his predecessor for his own consistent failures?

Obama himself provided the answer to this question last week with the beginning of sequestration: “Let’s be clear.  None of this is necessary.  It’s happening because a choice that Republicans in Congress have made.  …  Not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away.  The pain, though, will be real.  All of this will cause a ripple effect throughout our economy.  …  So every time that we get a piece of economic news over the next month, next two months, next six months, as long as the sequester is in place we’ll know that that economic news could have been better if Congress had not failed to act.”

Remember, sequestration is not even a cut in spending, but is a reduction in the rate of the increase in spending.  We are not spending less; we simply didn’t increase our spending as much as we initially intended to, and even that is just a difference of a fraction of a percent.  There is no way sequestration should be able to cause any suffering to the American people, but liberals in government and media alike will do everything they can to create the image that sequestration is destroying our way of life.

What’s more, contrary to Obama’s claims, the sequester is not the invention of the mean and nasty Republicans.  THE SEQUESTER IS THE CREATION OF BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA!!!

However, as with blaming Bush, the reality of the situation is just an obstacle to be overcome in the Democrats’ propaganda effort.  In his own words, Obama so much as told us that from now on, any negative economic news coming our way can be blamed on the sequester and the Republicans in congress.  The media will carry this message for him, as they did when they slandered Bush for the previous four years.

We also know that the economy will not be getting better as long as Obama is in the White House, so this is a win-win situation for the Democrats.  Obama now has something fresh to use as an excuse for his own failings, and it also grants him a new weapon to use against the Republicans in his campaign to destroy them in congress in the 2014 elections.

Not only does Barack Obama still get a pass for failing to fix the economy, but it is now in his best interests to preside over economic decline.

The maneuver is diabolically clever.  Obama has manufactured yet another “crisis” which is not a crisis, and it is entirely of his own creation, but he will use it to blame Republicans holding office for any hardships in the upcoming years, just as he blamed Bush before them.

Conservatives’ only hope is that they can succeed where they failed over the past few years and prove to the American public that Obama is the true source of our adversity.  With the media working against them, this will not be easy.  But if they fail in this effort, and if they lose control of the House in 2014, Obama will have unchecked and unrestrained power to finish his goal of destroying America as it was founded.

Original article: Sequestration is the New Bush

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