Minority Rule in a Democracy

“One is a majority if he is right.”

--Abraham Lincoln

Obama had the country with him when he took office. Bush had been highly partisan, relying on his small congressional majority to rule. Obama promised us something different, one country united, working together. But Rahm Emanuel let on when the country was undergoing economic collapse last fall that "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Never waste a crisis. So instead of jobs, we got Obama’s “pillars,” a highly divisive drive for “investment” in education, renewable energy, and health care, all of which explode the deficit Obama shamelessly said he would reduce, all of which make it much harder to help business create jobs.

Turns out, Obama is a classic “tax and spend” liberal. Except on a scale never before seen in peacetime. He’s content to govern in an almost totally partisan way, as he is able to do, given his large Democratic majorities in both houses.

Polls show the country wants job creation, not Obama’s liberal agenda. Polls show the country is overwhelmingly center-right. But liberals believe they are correct today, and seemingly feel the country will follow them tomorrow. Never mind the actual majority. Because liberals are “right,” they are Lincoln’s “majority of one.”

Liberals’ self assurance that they know what’s best for the country stems from a belief that cream rises to the top; that liberals are America’s natural rulers and have been since Roosevelt righted the ship of state in 1933. That, plus the virtue of being “right” on the big issues since.