Its Not Just About Health Care

A lot of liberals are making the mistake in thinking that all of the protesting out there by the citizenry is just about the health care bills.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Some of it is....it is the issue du jour. But there is a lot more. A lot.

Victor Davis Hanson, is great essay, says it this way:

"There is a growing sense of a “we’ve been had”, bait-and-switch. Millions of moderate Republicans, independents, and conservative Democrats — apparently angry at Bush for Iraq and big deficits, unimpressed by the McCain campaign, intrigued by the revolutionary idea of electing an African-American president — voted for Obama on the assumption that he was sincere about ending red state/blue state animosity. They took him at his word that he was going to end out-of-control federal spending. They trusted that he had real plans to get us out of the economic doldrums, and that he was not a radical tax-and-spend liberal of the old sort."

Read the whole thing here.

Professor Hanson goes on the give reasons for why "we have been had" but there are others he misses.

And he misses one important thing: these protests are also against the Republican policies of the last few years.

The people are tired of the government messing everything up. They are tired of the corruption, the power of the big lobbyists, the huge and growing deficits, the move to have the government control every aspect of our lives, the terrible, huge bailouts of the financial institutions, the nationalization of Chrysler and General Motors with the concurrent gift of 40% of the stock in GM to the United Auto Workers, an adjunct of the Democratic Party, and a whole list of other things.

While the Democrats may be the worst offenders, Republicans started us down the path to the bailouts and the nationalizations, and certainly were running up huge deficits. They also really enjoyed slopping at the trough when they were in power.

Much of this anger is directed at the entire political process. Some did, as Hanson points out, foolishly think that Obama might really change things, and hope that government could be made to work better.

Obama's only interest is to make it work better for his political allies. Anyone who thinks differently is still being foolish.

My view is that Americans do want their government to work better than it has, but they also want it to be limited to those things government can do best.

They want the government to stay out of things that the government is incapable of doing, like making medical choices for over 300 million Americans. Some regulation, yes. Deciding when to put granny down, or whether grandpa can have a knee replaced, or a neonate should be saved or not, no.

Hell no.

Running Chrysler and General Motors, no.

Taxing energy and destroying our economy (even more), no.

Running up trillions more in national debt, no.

Expanding government at the expense of the private sector, no.

One could go on and on. Obama is trying to cram the very opposite down our throats. The Republicans so far have not really put forward credible and effective alternatives, at least none that have been well publicized.

Message to Republicans: don't try to regain power by saying "we will do better." Nobody will believe you.

Show us.

Message to Democrats: Get off the socialism now.