How Obama has turned the country … rightward

In his syndicated column in the New York Post, Richard Lowry catalogs, more fully than has been seen so far, the ways in which Obama’s presidency has led to a rebirth of conservatism:

In nine months, he has breathed life into the Republican Party, boosted pro-lifers, tarnished the reputation of regulation, bolstered traditional values, increased the public’s desire for immigration restriction and shifted independent voters rightward.

No, Obama hasn’t turned back the oceans. But revivifying conservatism almost before books announcing its death could be published qualifies as a feat almost as miraculous.

These are excellent and encouraging developments. And that sentence about the recent books (by liberals) announcing the death of conservatism is a zinger. At the same time, I cannot help but ask, did Lowry say before the presidential election last year that he thought that Obama would revivify conservatism? Of course not. He was pulling with all his might for McCain. In fact, he was so eager for McCain that he began pulling for him the moment Lowry’s own candidate, Romney, came in second in the Iowa caucuses in December 2007. Meanwhile, prior to November 2008, I must have said a fifty times that the election of McCain would lead to the death of conservatism, and that the election of Obama would lead to a rebirth of conservatism.

Why the GOP should give O a prize
By RICHARD LOWRY
October 10, 2009

The Nobel committee may have chosen President Obama as the Peace Prize winner because of its hopes for his impact on the world—but his top achievement so far has come at home. Indeed, Obama has been on a roll.

In nine months, he has breathed life into the Republican Party, boosted pro-lifers, tarnished the reputation of regulation, bolstered traditional values, increased the public’s desire for immigration restriction and shifted independent voters rightward.

No, Obama hasn’t turned back the oceans. But revivifying conservatism almost before books announcing its death could be published qualifies as a feat almost as miraculous.

The 19th-century author Nathaniel Hawthorne warned of the perverse effects of grand schemes: “We miss the good we sought, and do the good we little cared for.” For Obama, proving that we live in a center-right country presumably isn’t a “good” at all, but he’s done it with a finality that the late sociologist Seymour Lipset—a student of America’s cussedly right-leaning attitudes—might envy.

Obama’s liberal grandiosity has reminded people why they tend to be conservative—something they wanted to forget during the last four years of the Bush administration.

Gallup’s surveys in recent months are a long catalog of the Obama snap-back. Fifty-three percent of Americans want government to promote traditional values—“a return to the prevailing view from 1993 through 2004.” Half of Americans want less immigration—“a return to the attitudes that prevailed in the first few years after 9/11.” Forty percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative—“a level last seen in 2004.” Fifty-one percent of Americans call themselves pro-life—“a significant shift from a year ago.”

It all explains the Obama administration’s rush to push sweeping legislation. The fall from grace of George W. Bush coupled with the financial crisis, created a golden hour for American liberalism. The public’s attitudes shifted left, and anything—a New New Deal! a Greater Great Society!—seemed possible. Now, public opinion is returning to its natural state, and Democrats are left in a race against the clock.

They want to pass, by roughly yesterday, a health-care program that won’t take effect until 2013. The fact that the program is unpopular (53 percent oppose it, and 33 support it, according to the latest Fox News poll) only makes its swift passage more imperative. Hurry, before the window closes entirely.

The spectacle of a president elected partly on his cool, his seeming moderation and his post-partisanship jamming as much of an ideological agenda through as quickly as possible is not pleasing to the political independents enticed by all those qualities last year. More independents say they lean Republican than Democratic in a recent Gallup survey, narrowing the GOP’s gap in party ID to the closest it’s been since 2005.

In a feat that would be beyond Alan Greenspan and an army of “Atlas Shrugged”-touting libertarians, Obama and the Democrats have even managed to snap back attitudes toward regulation. In the wake of the financial crisis, a Michael Moore documentary trashing capitalism would have seemed superfluous. Why bother, when so many bankers did the trashing themselves? But TARP, the auto bailouts and the $787 billion stimulus have soured people on government more.

According to Gallup, 57 percent of Americans say government is trying to do too many things best left to the private sector. More Americans (45 percent) say there is too much business regulation rather than too little (24 percent). It’s the worst showing for regulation ever in a Gallup survey.

“However, a March 1981 Los Angeles Times poll using this question wording recorded a 54 percent ‘too much’ level,” Gallup says. “This was just after Ronald Reagan took office, and may have reflected Reagan’s emphasis during the 1980 presidential campaign on the need to reduce government involvement in American society.”

When Obama suggested he wanted to be another Reagan, surely this wasn’t what he had in mind. But for now, he’s the right’s best community organizer.

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Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 10, 2009 11:25 AM | Send