On the Road to Dictatorship

In a speech before the City Club of Cleveland on March 18, 2015, Barack Obama put into words what, until now, he has only allowed himself to dream about.  In his remarks, he launched into a diatribe on how he would choose to run U.S. elections… if only he could dictate his own terms.

According to the Associated Press, when he was asked about the “corrosive” influence of money in U.S. elections, he digressed into the related topic of voting rights, suggesting that “the U.S. should be making it easier… not harder… for people to vote.”

For those who may doubt the wisdom of mandatory voting, he suggested, “Just ask Australia, where citizens have no choice but to vote.  If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.”  As Obama sees it, universal voting would counteract the evil influence of money in politics more than anything else.  This from a man who raised $750 million against John McCain in 2008 (much of it from illegal foreign sources), and $1.12 billion in his reelection bid against Mitt Romney in 2012.  So, if money in politics is “corrosive,” as Obama suggests, then he is the most thoroughly “corroded” politician in U.S. history.

He went on to note that, disproportionately, those who fail to vote on Election Day are younger, lower-income, and more likely to be immigrants or minorities.  Translated, what Obama yearns for is a nation in which the most ignorant and uninformed people (his base) are required to vote.

On Election Day 2008, in an attempt to learn how much Obama voters knew about politics and current affairs, Zogby International interviewed more than 500 Obama voters outside polling places across the country, asking the same fourteen questions in each location.  One of those interviews with self-proclaimed Obama voters was caught on film and circulated on the Internet.  They were asked:

  1. Which party currently controls Congress?
  2. Do you know who Barney Frank is?
  3. Do you know who Nancy Pelosi is?
  4. Do you know who Harry Reid is?
  5. What do you think of Bill Ayers?
  6. Which candidate was given $150,000 worth of clothes by a political party?
  7. Which candidate has a pregnant teenage daughter?
  8. Which candidate said they could see Russia from their home?
  9. Which candidate said they’d campaigned in all 57 states?
  10. Which candidate won their first political campaign by having all the other candidates of their own party kicked off the ballot on technicalities?
  11. Which candidate had to quit a previous campaign because of a plagiarized a speech?
  12. Which candidate said their policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and cause energy prices to skyrocket?
  13. Which candidate said that the government should redistribute wealth?
  14. Where do you get most of your news?

Those  interviewed were two white females, aged 20-25; three black females, aged 20-25; one black female, aged 40-45; two white males, aged 35-40; one white male, aged 55-60; and three black males, aged 40-45.

When asked which party controlled Congress in 2008, and what they thought of Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Bill Ayers, one black woman thought Pelosi was a “fair” woman, but none knew that Democrats controlled Congress or had any idea who Frank, Pelosi, Reid, or Ayers were.  However, when questioned about which candidate received a $150,000 clothing allowance from a political party, which candidate had a pregnant teenage daughter, and which candidate was charged (falsely) with having said that she could see Russia from her home, nearly all were able to name Sarah Palin.

When asked which candidate claimed to have campaigned “in all 57 states,” which candidate won their first political campaign by having all of their opponents kicked off the ballot, which candidate claimed that their policies would bankrupt the coal industry and cause energy prices to  skyrocket, and which candidate said that government should redistribute wealth, most of those interviewed attributed those statements to either Sarah Palin or John McCain… none named Barack Obama.  And when asked which candidate had to withdraw from a previous campaign because he had plagiarized a speech, none knew that it was Joe Biden.

Not surprisingly, when asked where they got all of their information, the respondents mentioned ABC, CBS, CBC, CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, the New York Times, Bill Moyers, Jon Stewart, and the Colbert Report.  So is it any wonder then that they knew nothing about current affairs but took yellow journalism from network news and yellow propaganda from Democrats and television comedy skits as fact?

If the Zogby poll tells us nothing else, it tells us that a lot of people are voting who shouldn’t be because they are not representative of the sort of informed voters necessary to the maintenance of a constitutional republic.  By relying on yellow journalism and yellow propaganda as their primary sources of political information, they cast themselves, in fact, as enemies of the republic.

In the best of all worlds, voter registration should be open only to those who could provide evidence of property ownership, and their immediate family members, while on Election Day prospective voters should be required to score at least 60% on a simple fourth or fifth grade level civics exam, with multiple choice questions drawn at random from a pool of questions.

Unfortunately, it is precisely the type of voter interviewed by Zogby that Obama and other Democrats are interested in herding into the voting booths.  They make up a large enough segment of the Democratic base to sway most elections.  Without them, Democrats could never win control of any legislative body, nor could they elect a president or a vice president.  Such voters are the life blood of the Democrat Party.

As matters now stand, the Democrat Party is totally dependent on the availability of a large pool of ignorant and uninformed voters, such as those produced by the public education system and our colleges and universities.  It represents a “devil’s bargain” between the teachers’ unions and the Democrat Party in which the teachers’ unions churn out millions of ignorant, uneducated, and uninformed voters in exchange for the right to dictate education policy and funding to Democrats in Congress and in the state legislatures.

In a series of widely circulated remarks, former Clinton operative James Carville is quoted as saying:

“Ideology isn’t all that important.  What’s important is psychology.  The Democratic constituency is like a herd of cows.  All you have to do is lay out enough silage and they come running.  That’s why I became an operative working with Democrats.  With Democrats, all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ole’ cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd.  Eighty percent of the people who call themselves Democrats don’t have a clue as to political reality.

“What amazes me is that you could take a group of people who are hard workers and convince them that they should support social programs that were the opposite of their own personal convictions.  Put a little fear here and there and you can get people to vote any way you want…

“Truth is relative.  Truth is what you can make the voter believe is the truth.  That’s why I’m a Democrat… I can make the Democratic voters think whatever I want them to.”

Although Carville’s remarks are unsubstantiated and may, in fact, be bogus, the truth of those sentiments are undeniable and represent what Republicans have always known about Democrats.  Put those sentiments together with an ethically-challenged politician, motivated by a foreign ideology, and what do you have?  We have the United States of America under Barack Obama.

In the March 22, 2015 edition of the New York Post, Michael Goodwin says of Barack Obama: “First he comes for the banks and health care, uses the IRS to go after critics, politicizes the Justice Department, spies on journalists, tries to curb religious freedom, slashes the military, throws open the borders, doubles the debt, and nationalizes the Internet.

“He lies to the public, ignores the Constitution, inflames race relations and urges Latinos to punish Republican ‘enemies.’  He abandons our ­allies, appeases tyrants, coddles ­adversaries, and uses the Crusades as an excuse for inaction as Islamist terrorists slaughter their way across the Mideast.  Now he’s coming for Israel…  Barack Obama’s promise to transform America was too modest.  He is transforming the whole world before our eyes…”

In a recent townhall meeting I suggested to our second term congressman that he ask those in attendance if they knew who Valerie Jarrett was and what role she plays in the Obama White House.  Only four of us in the room, all Republican activists, knew the answer to the question.

Barack Obama and Valerie Jarrett have put us well down the road to a fascist dictatorship.  What remains to be seen is whether or not rank-and-file Republicans will be concerned enough and wise enough to turn their backs on establishment Republican candidates in 2016, nominating, instead, conservative leaders with the backbone to lead us back from the abyss.