President Obama (henceforth to be known as Philosopher-King Obama from a Victor Davis Hanson post today) told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos his thoughts on Scott Brown’s Massachusetts victory:
Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.
Now, Brown did campaign specifically on stopping Obama’s Health Care fiasco, he hammered the Obama Administration for Mirandizing the BVD-Bomber and generally granting terrorists full Constitutional protections, and he did repeatedly say Obama’s reckless spending was unconscionable. Only the last of those things angered people about George Bush.
What Scott Brown and the voters in Massachusetts apparently did not understand is that This Is Still George Bush’s Fault by a factor of 8 years to 1. That won’t be even until the end of an increasingly unlikely second term, because what Obama seems not to grasp is that the campaign against George Bush was run – by Martha Coakley.
Mr. Philosopher-King, let me try and explain this to you a in different way. Many of the people who voted for you would prefer to have George Bush back. Many of them voted just last Tuesday. Some things are about you.
By now you have to be considering an amendment to the Health Care bill to expend all the resources the Feds can bring to bear for the express purpose of keeping George Bush alive into the next century.
Anger at Bush did help Obama win, of course, but for him to conflate that with the very specific issues Scott Brown campaigned on – in a special election in the bluest state in the union – is mendacious. It indicates the aftershocks of Tuesday reverberate, but are not understood. Obama’s analysis could not have been much better crafted to fan the flames of disgust with his performance. He does think you are stupid and he just said it again.
Victor Davis Hanson can help us gauge the ongoing damage with this gem: The Democratic Reaction Richter Scale
The Democratic statist transformation suffered a sudden earthquake in Massachusetts last night. How can we measure the severity of the upcoming reaction aftershocks?
The subsequent damage will depend on the magnitude of the next round of shaking—a 7 aftershock ensuring rubble, a 1 suggesting that rebuilding can proceed.
Go read the scale.
I think the Philosopher-King’s analysis of the vote rates a 6.3. On the face of it, it hovers between a 5 and a 6, but the Philosopher-King himself said it, not a minion, and he does blame Bush.