He’s Winning?
One of the lessons most of us managed to learn in confronting bullies early in life is that few things can overcome the power of mockery and ridicule. The biggest, baddest schoolyard bullies are often overwhelmed when their victims band together and belittle them. The same rule holds true in politics, and indeed, it’s a standard political approach. Catching politicians eating corn-dogs, or making a mockery of their off-the-cuff comments has been the stuff of political mockery for centuries. It’s effective because most people like to laugh, particularly at the expense of the high and mighty. Who on Earth is higher and mightier than a US president? Who is more open to ridicule than the man who occupies the Oval office? We conservatives often worry that we’re not “winning” the public opinion because we’re painted as dour or heartless or humorless. Laugh a little. This President is affording us every opportunity to prevail as he undertakes every extreme action to enhance the pain of the shutdown for Americans. Yes, some of it is enraging, but it also speaks to the self-aggrandized view this man holds of himself. If you want to defeat a despot, mock him. Ridicule him. Make him the joke around town. None are more eligible for this treatment than Barack Hussein Obama.
It’s not as though we don’t have the evidence. After five days of the government shutdown, during which conservatives have taken to the airwaves to mock and ridicule this preposterous man, questioning his every action in light of his constitutional limits, his daily tracking-poll numbers are falling like a stone. Conventional wisdom had held that he could not be beaten, and that Republicans would take all the blame, but that hasn’t been demonstrated by the tracking polls. With every day this goes on, and with every joke that is told, Obama is seeing his approval numbers dip to all-time lows. If you want to know how to make a lame-duck of this President, it really comes down to credibility. After Putin humiliated him, and after a month of haughty lectures and accusations leveled at Republicans, he’s beginning to sound like an excuse factory. Whatever else may be true, the American people are catching on to this. It’s having an effect on his ability to carry out his threats. Think of the imagery of 90-year-old veterans at the WWII memorial being greeted with “Barrycades” erected by order of a president that desperate to make his political points. It’s an open invitation to ridicule.
On Saturday comes the news that Obama has “shut down the oceans,” and people are laughing about it. On Friday, it was made public that he’s ordered the Pentagon to shut down religious services in military chapels, and Americans emboldened by the zeitgeist begin to proclaim: “Obama is Furloughing G-d.” Now they mock his closure of Mt. Rushmore, asking if he will throw a curtain over it. Jay Leno asked his audience if they were more scared of the shutdown, or more afraid of it opening back up to uproarious laughter. The Obama-Reid shutdown is having precisely the opposite effect of what had been intended, and the more ludicrous the President’s actions, the more his approval drops. He tries to inflict more pain, and Americans are disgusted by it but then go on to laugh in the face of it all. At every turn, Americans are looking for new and more humorous ways to dismiss this president as the bullying lout he has become.
In social media, particularly on Twitter, the mockery goes on continuously. It’s having an effect, as each time some shrill leftist makes some idiotic claim on behalf of the administration, they are met with derision and mockery. The more this happens, the more it becomes difficult for Obama to have the impact he had hoped this shutdown opportunity would present. Early in the shutdown, the White House insiders whispered that they thought they were winning, and now, even that comment is mocked. Most of the Republicans in Washington don’t know how to handle this. Their heads are stuck in DC media coverage, and they don’t understand the mixed signals. From their districts, and in social media, support when they stand firm, while the establishment press insists that they are losing.
Naturally, a few of the smarter ones have instigated or joined in the mockery. Senator Ted Cruz has tweeted his share of appraisals of the Obama-care roll-out and the Obama-Reid shutdown, and it’s beginning to take a toll. Republicans questioned Cruz over his strategy during a caucus lunch this week, and the weak-kneed Republicans were bothered and accusatory, suggesting Cruz had “led them into a cul-de-sac” to borrow the phrase. What their shortsightedness reveals is how out-of-touch they are with the American people. If they understood the dynamics of our modern culture, they would recognize as has Senator Cruz that the American people are just beginning to engage fully and that they will demand that DC listen to their complaints. The tide has turned and the momentum is now gathering against the President, and if the surrender-set on Capitol hill would merely join the “Cruzade,” not even the establishment media would be able to rescue the Obama presidency from lame-duck status.
Given what we know about Obama’s designs and intentions, this may be the best way in which to stop him in his tracks. It may be the only way in which Obama-care is finally ejected into the ditch. What we conservatives can do is to join in the mockery and the ridicule of the bully. Obama wants to push old men around at the WWII memorial, and at Normandy, and anywhere else he can inflict pain. He wants to shut down religious services on military bases, and he wants to make the shutdown as painful as possible. We’re Americans, and we have always known throughout our history how to deal with pain. We laugh at it when we can muster the humor. Let us laugh in the face of this dictator-in-waiting, and show him we still know how to overcome bullies. This man won’t build a wall on our Southern border to keep out illegals, but he’ll throw up “Barrycades” around our treasured memorials? Such a man deserves all the contempt and ridicule we can muster.
