By Dave Andrusko
About two-thirds of the way into a story “Obama honeymoon may be over” that appeared today at “The Hill” newspaper, we read this from Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis
“Kofinis said the real question for Obama is what kind of emphasis he’s going to place on his second term because the public will have less patience than they did during his first.
“’The challenge in a second term is the American people look at certain things and have a higher tolerance in a second term,’ he said. ‘When they know you’re not running for reelection again, they hold you to a higher standard.’”
What should we make of the story by Amie Parnes and Justin Sink?
Let me offer three thoughts about our benighted pro-abortion President’s situation.
First, it is both true and hardly surprising that his numbers have taken a hit since November. CNN’s poll, released yesterday, had exactly half disapproving of Obama’s job performance as compared with 47% approving. But as Parnes and Sink observe, even the most popular Presidents slide early into their second term. Not sure if it has anything to do with being held to a “higher standards,” or not, but in Obama’s case, I have long argued that reason had very little to do with the crush that the American people have on him. Is it only a coincidence that many more people know about Obama’s passion for college basketball and for picking “March Madness” winners than know he just visited Israel?
Second, Obama has thoroughly beaten the “mainstream media” into submission. They’ve always been in the tank for him; now many reporters seem almost afraid of him, or least easily cowed into submission. This story notwithstanding, reporters keep giving him a wide berth to make many mistakes but not get written off as failing, let alone irrelevant. As someone who writes for a living, this is both disconcerting, embarrassing, and, frankly, scary. This combination of infatuation, self-censorship, and desire to see even a broken glass as half-full will mean (as one Republican told Parnes and Sink)
“He has the opportunity to take minor legislative victories and blow them up into major accomplishments.”
And third, whatever are the high profile issues at the moment—the budget, the deficit, and immigration, for example—there are still almost four more years for Obama to make lethal mischief on the life issues. To name just a few, that could take the form of appointments to the courts, including the Supreme Court; appointments to the bureaucracy; the spooling out of ObamaCare with all its inducements to rationing of medical care at the same time it fattens the coffers of the Abortion Establishment; exporting abortion overseas, always a high pro-abortion priority; assaults on conscience rights; and, of course, should any pro-life initiative miraculously circumvent the pro-abortion Senate, Obama would wield his veto pen.
In other words, we know President Obama is a dedicated pro-abortionists who has loaded up his administration with pro-abortionists like an overzealous shelf stocker. He figuratively and literally wines and dines the likes of NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Far from giving an inch, in his second term Obama will attempt to cease more ground.
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