The Sunshine Empire

It’s well documented that conservative expectations for the performance of the Obama administration are uniformly negative. Mr. Obama could propose tomorrow that the federal capital be renamed “Reagantown” and conservatives would find some element of fascism within the proposal. But an accurate way to gauge the successes of the Obama administration is what conservatives and tea party types are not complaining about. Case in point is the TARP program. The Troubled Asset Relief Program was proposed and passed by the Bush Administration and supported by such luminaries as Hank Paulson and Glenn Beck. Once the Obama administration took control of the federal government, the program morphed into the keystone of the Obama effort to convert our great republic into a Soviet socialist republic. As the American economy continued to struggle in the early days of the Obama administration due to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Republicans understood that they no longer had a vested interest in the economy succeeding. The same republicans that damned democrats for supposedly rooting for the U.S. to fail in Iraq, started openly rooting for the American economy to fail. Talk began to spread that the only solution would be for the government to nationalize the large banks that were teetering on the brink. The same conservatives that had cautiously approved of TARP began an almost daily denunciation of the plan in an attempt to tie it and the failing economy to the young Obama administration. Yet a curious thing happened on the way to socialist dictatorship, the banking system stabilized. The Dow recovered its massive losses and those banks that were to be nationalized were now turning profits. Soon a large majority of the TARP funds were repaid with interest. The other notable difference was how the criticism of the TARP plan disappeared. It’s hard to slam the President for his successes.

The other major achievement not being discussed by the in-the-tank liberal Obama media is the Iraq war withdrawal. During the campaign in 2008, then-Senator Obama had proposed a timetable for withdrawal that matched almost exactly what the Bush administration eventually codified with the Iraqi government. His plan for withdrawal was slammed as insanity by his republican opponents that year, including Senator John McCain. Obama’s naivety and lack of military experience were presented as proof positive that the planned withdrawal would be a disaster. Yet here we are on the verge of its successful completion, and you hear nary a word ill or otherwise about this. Again, its hard to slam the President for his successes.

The same silence that now comes from the right with regard to the success of the TARP program and Iraqi withdrawal can be seen with the issue of the health care reform law as well. The same defeated republicans that swore blood oaths to repeal the accursed “government takeover of health care” are now curiously silent on the matter. They are left to cheer in the away stands and hope that the American economy still struggles with its running game.