Obamatoons

Obama's Blame-Bush-for-Economy Tactic Fails

As it becomes clear that his economic policies are not working, President Obama’s solution is to trot out his favorite scapegoat more frequently.

In his latest effort to blame President Bush, Obama said, “It’s been nearly two years since that terrible September when our economy teetered on the brink of collapse . . . What we did know was that it took nearly a decade to dig the hole that we’re in — and that it would take longer than any of us would like to climb our way out.”

Obama may sound like a broken record, but he’s not fooling anyone. If the CEO of a company kept blaming poor results on a predecessor from nearly two years back, he would be fired. But Obama has so little regard for the intelligence of the American people that he thinks his cover-up of his own failings will work.

Just as transparent are Obama’s repeated claims that his healthcare law will save money and “bend the cost curve” of rising healthcare premiums. He is right — in the opposite direction. The healthcare law will not only raise premiums, it will raise taxes while reducing the quality and availability of healthcare.

Just as regularly, Obama expresses regret for not making Washington more bipartisan, yet he laces his speeches with gratuitous swipes at Republicans and has excluded them from legislative planning sessions.

Behind Obama’s belief that he can get away with such patently untrue statements is his opinion that Americans are pretty stupid. If you doubt that, look at his comments during the campaign about job losses.

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing’s replaced them,” Obama said in April 2008. “And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

"And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

The polls show that Americans are not so dumb. By large margins, Americans reject nearly all of Obama’s major policy initiatives. In 9 of 15 issues examined by an Associated Press-GfK poll, more Americans who expressed intense interest in a problem voiced strong opposition to Obama's work on it, including the economy, unemployment, federal deficits and terrorism.

A new Gallup poll shows Republicans with a 10-point edge over Democrats on the question of whether voters prefer a Democratic or Republican congressional candidate. This is the largest GOP polling advantage at this point in the election cycle in 68 years of generic ballot polling.

If Obama doesn’t get it, Americans do.

By Ronald Kessler, Wednesday, 01 Sep 2010 09:18 AM

Ronald Kessler is chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com. View his previous reports and get his dispatches sent to you free via e-mail. Go here now.

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