Mr. Smith, You're Needed in Washington

January 01, 2010
By Phil Orenstein

We no longer seem to be living in a constitutional republic. How could we be when the votes of our public officials are easily bought off with bribes, threats, and subversion of our Constitution? The Christmas fiasco of the Senate vote-buying ordeal to pass the health care bill is a perfect illustration of how Congress is out of control and no longer represents the will of the people. According to a CNN/ORC survey, the overwhelming majority of Americans are opposed to the Senate version of Obamacare, a bill that will nationalize one-sixth of the U.S. economy and grant unprecedented power to the federal government over the life of every American. Months of public outcry at town hall meetings since the summer, a one-million-man taxpayer march on Washington, D.C., thousands of local protests and rallies in every city and town across America, massive petitions, and thousands of calls and faxes have barely made an impression on the sixty senators who control the destiny of our country.

This ill-fated congressional makeup is the outcome of the 2008 election, in which hostile feelings against the GOP played out at the polls. As polling data shows, this hostile attitude keeps the GOP in low voter esteem even though all forty Republicans have lined up in opposition to the Senate health care bill. As public displeasure with the Obama administration and Democrats mounts, the GOP public approval has remained at a constant low of 28%. A Rasmussen survey shows that 73% of Republican voters believe their leaders in Washington are out of touch with the party base, and a hypothetical Tea Party would beat the GOP if general elections were held today. the rest image

A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy
No despot fears the president, and no demonstrator in Tehran expects him to ride to the rescue.

Clueless
It’s the word that best describes the Obama administration’s first year in office.