Wednesday, June 11, 2014

My 2008 predictions for the Obama Presidency

Below is a predictions column I wrote in October of 2008. I was way off on number one--it's been worse--but the others stand the test of time. ~Bob

What to Expect From President Obama

Robert A. Hall

John McCain’s jet couldn’t avoid the rocket that plunged him into five years of Communist hell in 1967. It’s now clear that McCain’s campaign can’t avoid another rocket, and the country will be plunged into four years of an Obama Administration.

The rocket coming at McCain is Bush and the economy. Obama must love the irony. McCain was Bush’s implacable enemy in the Republican Party, an apostate to the far right. And McCain sought to rein in Fannie and Freddie with S-190 in 2005, while recipients of Fannie contributions, like Senators Dodd and Obama, defeated the attempt. Now McCain’s old nemesis Bush and the Fannie-fueled economic implosion will bring McCain down.

What can we expect from President Obama?

1. It won’t be as bad as conservatives think. It’s hard to move the bloated bureaucracy off the shining path of making bureaucrats comfortable. Obama won’t be able to swing the country as far left as his base hopes. Plus the economic meltdown will tie the hands of the next president, regardless.

2. Despite his class warfare speeches, the most productive members of society won’t suffer as much as Obama’s leftist supporters want. But people without education and skills will hurt more. Taxing those who make over $250,000 sounds sweet to the boobocracy, but the threshold for the upper 5% of taxpayers is only $153,000. There just ain’t enough “rich” to pay for all the goodies, so the rest of us will. And raising the Capital Gains Tax as Obama has promised reduces revenue by driving job-creating capital from the market—just what we need. Obama will have less experience and a stronger Democratic congressional majority than Jimmy Carter. Remember interest rates, unemployment and inflation in the Carter years?

3. Republicans will do well in the 2010 midterm, as the corruption shoe fits the other foot. Democrats will now have more opportunities, and Obama is tied to the Fannie Mae looters and the Daley machine, all eager to get their hands back in the cookie jar. The fawning media will have a huge emotional letdown when Obama turns out to be just another Chicago politician, and will turn on him savagely. You read it here first.

4. Obama is deeply committed to multilateralism and working with Europe and the UN. But they are deeply committed to inaction. So in foreign policy, expect lots of talk and little action. He’ll push the war in Afghanistan hard or look weak. And he’ll follow the Clinton Doctrine of firing off a few missiles and talking tough after every terrorist attack.

5. There will be terrorist attacks. Watch for the Arab street to go wild with joy after Obama’s win is announced. Doubtless a few Jews and Christians will be murdered in celebration, creating hand-wringing and empty vows to “bring them to justice.” But the inevitably cut-and-run and chaos in Iraq, and the inevitable military cutbacks of an Obama administration will embolden our enemies, who will strengthen and attack. Israel will have to take out Iran’s atomic program alone, or die.

6. Watch for increasing accommodation to the stealth Jihad at home. Criticism of Islam and Muslims will become illegal as “hate speech,” though trashing Christians and Jews will still be fine. Every Muslim demand acceded to will lead to new demands. Resistance will be labeled “racism” as though Islam was a race, rather than a political-religious philosophy.

So what must we do?

Call out every speck of political corruption.

Call out politicians of both parties who push to spend military dollars on high-tech weapons to get votes rather than on the trained troops we need for this war.

Call out every attempt to silence dissent against creeping Islamization and the tyranny of Sharia.

And fight to preserve the Republic for the next Reagan, who will defeat this new Carter in four years.


Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran and former Massachusetts state senator.

No comments:

Post a Comment