“Hope and Change” is a buzz phrase we have been hearing for over two years.  While seeking the Democratic nomination for president, the Obama campaign couldn’t utter their promise enough, promising hope for a brighter future through energy independence by means of renewable energy, “green” jobs, Cap and Trade, and universal healthcare, and change to the partisan back-room politics of Washington.  Conservative talk show hosts take great pleasure of late laughing in the face of his campaign and supporters while pointing out all the ways the Obama administration has failed to deliver on the promises of the campaign.

We take a different perspective, and offer our sincere and heartfelt thanks to the Obama administration for providing the hope and change this country sorely needed.

 


Throughout that campaign the administrative branch of the federal government was personified by George W. Bush as he attempted to invoke a kinder and gentler government, a “compassionate conservatism,” by growing entitlement programs and ignoring the impending bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare.  It was the Bush administration that offered the first Keynesian stimulus package, and both Obama and his Republican opponent abandoned the campaign to meet with the president in Washington to work together to sell the program to the American people and to push it through Congress.   Of course it met no resistance in that chamber, for, though America has forgotten and the populist media chooses not to remind her, that chamber was controlled by Obama’s party and had been for several years.  Spending in general, and generously funded entitlement programs in particular, were consistently endowed by the House of Representatives that actually controls the federal budget process and America’s purse strings.

Unfortunately, they were aided by Republicans also in that chamber who had abandoned any conservatism they’d ever harbored and had rather become party to the spending and wheeling / dealing of their Democratic brethren.

So Mr. Obama is not entirely wrong to point his finger at Republicans when asked to identify the party responsible for the economic meltdown he inherited from Mr. Bush.

All Obama did was make it worse!

Right out of the gate, Obama began pushing his policies of hope and change.  Cap and Trade legislation was proposed, and passed the House.  Universal heathcare was proposed, and a watered down version was passed “by whatever means necessary,” and against the documented will of the majority of Americans.  Gargantuan stimulus packages followed on the heels of the first Bush package, and funded bailouts of United Auto Workers Union members in the government’s support of the salvation of failing automobile manufacturers.

America became furious, and the Tea Party movement was born.  True conservatives who had sat quietly on the sidelines during the Bush years were awakened by an internal call to action.  Many became active in the governance of our nation for the first time in their lives, choosing to do much more than simply vote occasionally. 

A dormant majority is dormant no more.  A new generation of Republicans has been identified which truly carries the mantle of the conservative cause.  Established “old school” Republicans are livid, but frightened, as most of them reside in the Senate where many have two to four years left in a six year term.  They sense the loss of their base, and are fearful that the “insurgent” Tea Partiers will not become dormant once again as the most immediate election, the 2010 “mid-terms,”  approach, then pass.

We must assure that their fears are well founded.  We cannot be satisfied with electing a new generation of conservatives to Washington and return to our lives of complacency.  The Lindsey Graham’s and Mitch McConnell’s of the Senate will still be there, and John McCain, selling himself as a “born again” conservative, will get elected to another six year term.

But Harry Reid will no longer be majority leader of the Senate, and Nancy Pelosi will be terminated and replace by John Boehner, a true conservative.  He will be supported by the “young guns” of the Republican Party, Messrs. Cantor of Virginia, McCarthy of California, and Ryan of Wisconsin, and others of similar mindset, the likes of which the Democratic Party and the old school Republican Party have not seen for generations.

In them rests the hope that Barack Obama has brought to the United States, and with them is represented the change that is so sorely needed.  We owe it to the Obama campaign and administration for having brought this hope and change about.

But it’s a hope we must not allow to die.  The 2010 elections are just the half way point, so the hope must be kept alive through the 2012 election cycle and beyond.  By keeping it alive, we can truly and significantly change this nation for the better for generations to come.

So the next time you hear someone scoff sarcastically about Obama’s hope and change, point out to them that he is indeed responsible for the changes that are occurring in our country, and the hope those changes promise.