Conservatives are taking too much solace in the precipitous drop in Barack Obama's approval ratings, and too many of us are overconfident that his administration is merely a replay of the hapless presidency of Jimmy Carter that was easily swept out in a landslide election. Today's situation is far different, far more conducive to our political adversary's political power, than that which faced Carter. And Obama is an entirely different breed of cat. He's more ruthless, more tactically savvy, and has far more dangerous objectives. A drop in his poll ratings isn't as serious a setback for him as similar occurrences were for the peanut farmer from Plains.

In short, conservatives should beware. The political battle we're in is far more difficult than any the conservative movement has ever faced. It will take all our energy and all our smarts to win it.

First, consider the differences in political circumstances between Obama and Carter. Unlike Carter, Obama does not face a Kennedy-led left wing of his party that despises him. Unlike Carter, Obama did not take office by an incredibly slim majority vote so close that a few thousands votes in two states would have swung the whole election. Unlike Carter, Obama took office in the middle of a crisis he could blame on his predecessor and coming off an unpopular war that he could blame almost entirely on the Republican Party. On the right, Carter faced a conservative movement (even if not a Republican Party) unified and energized by an inspirational leader -- but no similar, single spokesman today galvanizes conservatives like Ronald Reagan did then. Carter also did not have a nationwide movement kept together by a tool like the Internet, and did not have billionaires behind his general aims the way Obama has George Soros.

Finally, Obama has the advantage of a more ethnically diverse nation that has far less of a common culture and less of a common appreciation of shared socio-political history and values. Why is that an advantage? Because it gives him more leeway to make outlandish claims, and still have huge pluralities believe him, than Carter could ever hope for.

More important than all that, though, is that Obama's personal skills, aims, and training are like nothing we have ever seen before in the White House. Every other president before him has intended at most to achieve change within the American political system. Obama wants to change the system itself. He is a radical's radical, with an authoritarian impulse. His Alinskyite training means that social unrest doesn't unnerve him; it plays right into his hands. Social unrest is both his modus operandi and his mid-term goal. The more unrest, the greater the crisis; the greater the crisis, the more excuse he has to use and consolidate central power in order to completely remake society.

And unlike Carter or most other Democratic presidential nominees of the past 45 years, Obama has tremendous oratorical skills. Sure, Bill Clinton could please lots of audience members with small promises, but he did not possess half the ability to inspire people (however misguidedly) that Obama does. Obama has the talent to raise demagoguery to an art form.

Already we see a cult of personality around Obama, one deliberately encouraged by the Obama political operation. Already we see him push for centralizing, fascistic economic powers. Already we see him creating "a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the regular military, complete with uniformed youths (and even senior citizens) formed into "cadres." And in order to make AmeriCorps less answerable to the public, Obama fired the Inspector General trying to blow the whistle on nefarious AmeriCorps activities. Now he is using AmeriCorps and the National Endowment for the Arts to politically agitate for his "recovery agenda."

And that's not to mention the Big Brother-like data-mining and reporting of "casual conversations" to a White House website, or the creepy address to all the nation's school children -- or the continued public trashing, by the permanent Obama campaign known as Organizing For America, of ordinary citizen protesters as "Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists."

Obama also is politicizing the Census; giving contracts to ACORN; letting a recognized hate group like the New Black Panthers go free; undermining the CIA at every turn, radicalizing the Supreme Court; re-orienting the civil rights division of the Justice Department; appointing more "czars" than anybody can keep track of and who, unlike Cabinet members, do not answer to Congress; resisting transparency on TARP bailout funds; refusing to enforce financial reporting requirements on union political organizers; and doing all sorts of other things designed, as are the items above, to consolidate power, tilt the deck, and rig the political rules in his favor for the long haul.

In foreign affairs, his radicalism is even more apparent. He keeps undermining allies while embracing enemies. He deliberately undercut the brave protesters in Iran. He stubbornly continues to punish Honduras and its citizens, via economic and travel sanctions, because Honduras actually followed its own Constitution in removing a harshly anti-American president from office -- when he should have been rewarding Honduras for its commitment to the rule of law. Yet while he punishes friendly Hondurans, he refuses to punish radical leftist Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa when Correa's government tries to shake down an American company for $27 billion. It's all very bizarre. One wonders what exactly his agenda is. But it's clearly something the likes of which we've never seen. Again, the comparison with Carter's foreign policy is telling. Carter's was full of woolly-minded, pie-in-the-sky idealism, but it didn't deliberately mollycoddle sworn enemies. Obama's, on the other hand, portrays Obama to the world as if Obama himself is more admirable than the nation he supposedly represents -- a nation for which he continually apologizes. This attempt, so far quite successful, to garner personal, worldwide glorification is another gambit for power. Again, it makes him nobody for domestic political adversaries to trifle with. It gives him tools never enjoyed by the Jimmy Carter who was burned in effigy by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his pals in 1979 and 1980.

To defeat Obama's radicalism will take plenty of political savvy on the right. Until the 2010 elections, discontent should simmer, but not boil over. Civil unrest will not win the day; it will only help him. The one, and perhaps only, opportunity to stop his juggernaut will be in those mid-term elections. Every bit of conservatives' efforts should be directed at building a massive voter turnout to defeat Obama's leftist allies in 2010. The TEA parties and town hall protests and all the rest should be aimed at building a political infrastructure and political arguments sufficient to win those elections. The energy of conservatives should climax then and only then. Anything premature, anything over the top, will allow Obama to more effectively mobilize his own troops in the supposed name of order and stability.

Finally, it will help Obama that, probably by design, the bulk of the "stimulus" funds remain unspent. What will happen is that at just the right time, those funds will spur a false recovery -- a "recovery" hailed by the establishment media as proof of Obama's wisdom. The recovery won't last, because it won't be real. But that won't matter. Timed just right, it will allow Obama to claim the economic high road -- something Jimmy Carter never was able to claim. Relieved Americans who are apolitical could easily be swayed to "stay the course," just as Americans stayed the course with Ronald Reagan in 1982. But Reagan's course led to greater freedom; if Obama's course is stayed and he consolidates power in 2010, the diminution of freedom may be well-nigh irreversible.

In short, the wonderful conservative success in August should not hide the reality that our backs are still against the wall. Obama still owns the upper hand. If we make any major mistake, he will use that hand as a fist to smash the conservative movement to bits. Clear-eyed about this possibility, conservatives must keep fighting. Uphill. Against the wind. And without a Reagan to lead us.

I agree with the spirit of this article. It’s good that the tea parties and health care protests have begun to shake things up, and let these leftists know that American’s are completely comatose, but we shouldn’t get complacent even if we are able to defeat a few of his plans. Obama is a dyed in the wool Communist, and he will behave like every other Communist in history who has obtained executive powers.

In order to save our country, it’s of foremost importance, I believe, that Americans assert their right to bear arms. Not just by buying guns, but by organizing a display of force to let the government know that we are ready and willing to resist them if the time comes. We need to set a date, where all 60 million+ gun owner in America, regardless of the state they live in, take their guns out of the home and bear them as they go about their daily business. For some, this is nothing more than their daily routine, but for others it is currently illegal and would pose a risk to those citizens.

However, if Americans of all walks of life exercised the right in unity at the same time, the government would not dare to stop us, and all of their extralegal infringements on our natural rights would become moot in an instant. A law that is unenforceable is no law at all. Let’s teach our government that lesson and make sure that they remember it!

Excellent article.

I do believe Americans are STARTING to get it now.

Good thing, because my voice has gone hoarse from screaming to awaken the sleeping masses.

We are in trouble.

No he’s much much worse and much more dangerous than carter

People still have a way to go to understand how far Obama will go if not stopped. Having AG Holder prosecute the old regime means that they don’t plan on giving up power themselves, ever! They will, if they prevail, never be the “old regime”.

They are conducting rural cleansing while the health care theater has everyone caught up. To take control they must get the clingers out of the strategic countryside. Beware. When he has control, whatever “health care” he wants is just a stroke of the pen.

Heads up.

Yours is a solution which will bring Obama to his knees to thank Allah, but for saving his presidency and giving him his very own Reichstag fire. You are his dream conservative for the reasons expressed in the article here:

More important than all that, though, is that Obama's personal skills, aims, and training are like nothing we have ever seen before in the White House. Every other president before him has intended at most to achieve change within the American political system. Obama wants to change the system itself. He is a radical's radical, with an authoritarian impulse. His Alinskyite training means that social unrest doesn't unnerve him; it plays right into his hands. Social unrest is both his modus operandi and his mid-term goal. The more unrest, the greater the crisis; the greater the crisis, the more excuse he has to use and consolidate central power in order to completely remake society.

To defeat Obama's radicalism will take plenty of political savvy on the right. Until the 2010 elections, discontent should simmer, but not boil over. Civil unrest will not win the day; it will only help him. The one, and perhaps only, opportunity to stop his juggernaut will be in those mid-term elections. Every bit of conservatives' efforts should be directed at building a massive voter turnout to defeat Obama's leftist allies in 2010. The TEA parties and town hall protests and all the rest should be aimed at building a political infrastructure and political arguments sufficient to win those elections. The energy of conservatives should climax then and only then. Anything premature, anything over the top, will allow Obama to more effectively mobilize his own troops in the supposed name of order and stability.

Another major point, during the late 70s, decades of bad “economic engineering” by government central planners had discredited Keynesianism, not just in the eyes of the public, but among many economists as well (this was when free market economists like Hayek, Friedman, and Stigler started winning Nobels and getting serious respect in their field). Stagflation had convinced people that the government planners couldn’t run an economy as they had promised, since they were at a total loss to explain it, let alone fix it.

Not so, now. Hackonomists like Krugman and Stiglitz, desperate for free market economics to be “discredited” as economic engineers such as themselves had been decades ago, coupled with the left-wing media, have tried to paint this current recession as a result of deregulation and the free market. It’s hogwash, for reasons that go beyond what I’m trying to say here, but it’s sticking with a lot of people (just as the commonly believed “causes” of the Great Depression stuck fast). A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on.

It took decades of hard work to show that the Great Depression was caused by the Federal Reserve, and was not alleviated by the New Deal. How long until mainstream economics concedes that this recession, begun as a financial crisis, was due to over-regulation and central banks, and not the free market? Probably a while.

So, voters in the next election will not have the same bad taste in their mouth for central planning, this will help Obama, or at least it won’t put him at the same major disadvantage Carter had.

I could be wrong. Obamanomics could go downhill so quickly that by 2012 most voters will blame the poor economy on the government. There will be plenty of free market economists there to provide a credible attack on Obamanomics, anyway.

What makes Obama extremely dangerous is that he is thinking long-term in terms of what moves he has to make (with the help of the shadow party)to first destroy Sarah Palin and get her out of the picture permanently and then impose on America a totalitarian state with omnipresent bureaucratic tentacles with him as president for life

These are Obama’s 3 overriding goals. He will do anything to achieve these goals including declaring martial law and suspending elections if he has to. As for eliminating Sarah Palin I believe all options are on the table, and I mean ALL OPTIONS.

In short, the wonderful conservative success in August should not hide the reality that our backs are still against the wall. Obama still owns the upper hand.

Absolutely right. There's been a fair amount of gloating going around here about Obama's low poll numbers, but let's face it. No opinion poll, no matter how comforting, can change the fact that the left is in power and we aren't.

The author needs to understand that for all that they are, Obama’s powers are greatly overrated. I mean despite Obama’s organizing ability and his networking using the web and his legendary teleprompter reading skills, he lost almost every major state to Hillary and in the end it was affirmative action (super delegates) that granted him the nomination. We need to stay strong and focused and continue to educate the American public about his agenda, but Obama is nowhere near unbeatable.

I agree ...Bro is far far worse than Toothy

” A drop in his poll ratings isn't as serious a setback for him as similar occurrences were for the peanut farmer from Plains. “

I'd say the drop in 0bummer’s polls is a heck of a lot worse for him than for Carter. 0bama started at a much higher precntage of the popular vote, has fallen faster in the polls, and is a heck of a lot more narcissistic than Carter ever was.

“Unlike Carter, Obama took office in the middle of a crisis he could blame on his predecessor and coming off an unpopular war that he could blame almost entirely on the Republican Party”

The “blame Bush” thing is not working so well for 0bama in the polls right now is it?
Even independents, are now giving 0bama bad ratings on the war in Afghanistan. Right now, the public is beginning to blame 0bama for how badly the war is going in Afghanistan. And its going to get a lot worse there.

“On the right, Carter faced a conservative movement (even if not a Republican Party) unified and energized by an inspirational leader — but no similar, single spokesman today galvanizes conservatives like Ronald Reagan did then.”

Ummm..ever heard of Sarah Palin?

” Carter also did not have a nationwide movement kept together by a tool like the Internet,”

Well Cater did not have conservative talk radio like rush Limbuagh and Glen Beck, with a very wide audience, hammering him every day, like 0bame is getting either.
Plus Sarah Palin has been able to use the internet more effectively against 0bama, than 0bama has been able to use the internet against conservatives or Republicans in this helathcare battle.

“Finally, Obama has the advantage of a more ethnically diverse nation that has far less of a common culture and less of a common appreciation of shared socio-political history and values. Why is that an advantage? Because it gives him more leeway to make outlandish claims, and still have huge pluralities believe him, than Carter could ever hope for”

Well, 0bama’s not doing too great with the other ethnic groups like Latino’s right now is he?

Hispanics, who voted for 0bama by a huge margin of more than 40 points, right now break even (36-36) in the polls, when rating his performance.
Independents, the key swing group in our politics, now deliver a sharply negative 37-50 verdict on Obama’s job performance. The elderly also give him negative ratings.
Even among blacks, only 74 percent approve of the job he's doing (also a drop of more than 10 points).
http://www.newsmax.com/morris/obama_polls_healthcare/2009/09/03/256099.html

“His Alinskyite training means that social unrest doesn't unnerve him; it plays right into his hands”

Well he coulda fooled me. Seems to me he has lost his mojo right now, and his healthcare bill is going nowhere, and his last press conference and townhal performances have been pretty pathetic. The thing is, we conservatives have read Alinski's rules too. You can't effectively use tactics against your opponents, when they know your tactics and are using your own tactics against you too.

“And unlike Carter or most other Democratic presidential nominees of the past 45 years, Obama has tremendous oratorical skills”

0bama’s ability to fool Americans with his “oratorial skills” is fast diminishing, from his constant lies, from overuse,from overexposure, and from his lack of familiarity with the issues, including being wrong several times on what is contained in the healthcare bill.
His address to congress next week will probably have his lowest TV ratings ever, just like the his last press conference did.

Click the picture...

Jimmy was a just a liberal dumb ass. Sneaky bitch Obama knows what he is doing.

I understand your response to Boogie. I do believe we seriously tempt fate if we think we can play Zero at the game he has prepared. I doubt that there is an alternative but go back and re read the article and realize all his advantages. Soros' money, ACORN, Congress, Foreign powers, etc. Meanwhile we have Michael Steele. I'm sure he is a great guy but, really. That game is pretty well rigged. If he is able to add 20 or 30 million illegals to the voting process it is pretty much game over. When you look down the road what do you see?

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I agree: simmer rather than boil, but the simmer temperature must be sufficient to keep the citizenry awake and actively engaged.

Another thought - assuming that predictions for major Republican congressional gains in 2010 hold true, there is no doubt in my mind that Obama is formulating Plan B to circumvent congress and press his plans by means of executive department fiat and regulatory changes. The only way to halt this is to actively contest every step through the courts. Legal teams should be organized NOW in anticipation. This, I’m pleased to say, will represent the tearing of yet another page from the Left’s playbook: paralyzing the governing process by endless lawsuits and appeals. Victory in every lawsuit won’t be altogether necessary; it will be sufficient to delay the progress of events until this man can be evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2012.

Except I do not think he is really President. He is in the office all right, but someone else is calling the shots.

Who is the puppet master?

I have been preoccupied since long before the election about what sort of man is Barack Obama. I have long been past the decision point whether he is a radical Marxist or merely an extreme example of incoherent reflexive leftism, mixed in with ghetto conspiratorial mentality, and leavened with a measure of reverse racism. I conclude that he is a radical Marxist and he is all the more dangerous for it.

That means that the author is correct when he says that Obama is not out to manipulate the system but to junk the system and substitute a new one. Those him and who dismiss Obama as inexperienced or shallow have missed the man and lead others astray. Yes, Obama is inexperienced but he substitutes a ready-made formula for experience and for rigorous intellectual analysis. He has a playbook, better called a manifesto, which is all the resource he needs or wants.

He has learned the art of appearing cerebral by uttering the right shibboleths with the right tonal quality. This is typical of a narcissists who uniformly possess an intuitive feeling for their victims vulnerability and a sure sense of how to exploit it by telling them what they want to hear. Obama is uniquely protected in doing this because of his race. No one can stick his head above the parapet and criticize Obama without facing charges of racism-the ultimate trespass against political correctness. Violation of this taboo means banishment.

Obama is protected as the Magic Negro by white guilt and a need by the media to get out the right side of history and re-create for their generation the glory days of the civil rights movement. We are ruled by a narcissist who feeds his deep psychological needs by resort to a radical ideology which is enabled by the media and his race protects him from anyone observing that the Emperor has no clothes.

It is undeniable that the ground currents which elected Obama have changed and are now beginning to run the other way against him. Witness the general revulsion to his proposed address to the school children of the nation which I believe reaction to the cult of personality he has contrived about his person. When you Reagan and George Bush Senior made such talks to children, the Democrat reaction was muted. No one could ever accuse George HW Bush, among the most unassuming of men, of being a narcissist. The original lesson plan calling for the children to write down how they could help the president only aggravated the fears that Obama was now about to indoctrinate children on school time to the cult of his personality.

So the question is, how dangerous is Barack Obama? Those of us who predicted before his election that he was a dangerous Marxist take small comfort in watching his administration vindicate every warning. How far will he go? And Interestingly, the author of this article goes right up to the edge but never steps into the abyss of accusing Barack Obama of being capable of seizing extra constitutional power. But he hints at it and lets us draw the inference:

More important than all that, though, is that Obama's personal skills, aims, and training are like nothing we have ever seen before in the White House. Every other president before him has intended at most to achieve change within the American political system. Obama wants to change the system itself. He is a radical's radical, with an authoritarian impulse. His Alinskyite training means that social unrest doesn't unnerve him; it plays right into his hands. Social unrest is both his modus operandi and his mid-term goal. The more unrest, the greater the crisis; the greater the crisis, the more excuse he has to use and consolidate central power in order to completely remake society and . (Emphasis supplied)

So just as we have to decide what is Obama is after, social change or system change, we must differentiate between how he will act if he is given a convenient crisis or not. I believe that if the right is foolish enough to hand Obama a plausible excuse he will attempt to seize unconstitutional power. It may also come to pass that events offer Obama this opportunity. Those events might include an economic and financial melt down, a terrorist attack on the homeland probably involving a weapon of mass destruction, an assassination, a plague, a war, an interruption in petroleum supplies; anything that would equate to a Reichstag fire.

Every day more and more of the people are coming out of their self hypnosis which I described before the election is the "Obama pathology." Every day makes it more difficult for Obama to behave repugnant to the constitution and even to trespass against our cultural norms. I do not believe that he will have the support to without a "crisis" to seize unconstitutional power. That is not to say that he will refrain from power grabs but I think he has to leave the institutions in place as he found them unless he is blessed with a crisis.

There are many sources for such a crisis in my list above is no doubt incomplete. Our job is to unmask every move so that any unconstitutional coup would be generally resisted. In other words, we should all be Glenn Beck who is, in my judgment, worthy of an Emmy in any society not ruled by Franz Kafka.

So we are in a foot race to unmask Obama before fate changes the rules of the game. I know I've been hard at it since before the election and so have you. I believe that Obama, like Tojo, has awakened a sleeping giant which when fully aroused to injustice has a wrath which is terrible. But it is a foot race.