Senator Jim Demint earlier this year said that the Health-Care Bill would be Obama’s Waterloo. I only partially agree with him. He’s right that it will ultimately bring an end to his reign, but the Waterloo analogy doesn’t begin to capture the scope of the defeat. At the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon, who like Obama was thought to be a genius, was defeated by conscripts of the combined armies who fought to protect their own nation states. During this era of warfare, armies fought in formations on either side of the “battle field” training their weapons on the opposing army’s soldiers, and firing volley after volley until their opponents had either been killed or had broken ranks and fled leaving a bloody battle field strewn with dead and dying men. The Midterm elections in 2010 won’t resemble that at all. It won’t be near that pretty.
A better analogy might be Custer’s annihilation by Sitting Bull at the Little Bighorn. The Democrats, as did Custer, will be fighting against the guerrilla tactics of the indigenous tribes: Custer the Sioux and Cheyenne; the Democrats the Tea Party Patriots and other conservatives who feel as the Indians did that their way of life is being taken from them. Custer and the Democratic Leadership both underestimated the strength of their opponents and overestimated their own resources, counting heavily on reinforcements that in Custer’s case didn’t and in the Democrat’s case won’t arrive. The real distinction between the two battles is that when Napoleon and his army were defeated at Waterloo he was merely banished to the isle of Saint Helena, while Custer and his troops were massacred by Sitting Bull and his warrior braves. They weren’t given a Political time out. They were wiped off the map, and that is what is in store for the Democrats in 2010.
The big turn out at the polls that wasn’t, by Obama’s reinforcements, proves that they won’t fight for any one but him and he isn’t running in 2010. They didn’t turn out in the Battle for Virginia and were also no-shows in the fight for the NJ Governorship. That’s the problem with troops who are lead by the force of charismatic personality and not motivated by principal. The Democratic warriors fight only for an extra ration, while the Tea Party Patriots and Conservatives are fighting to protect their way of life.
There will be no Decisive Battle as there was at Waterloo and in the National Elections of 2008. Instead there will be, just as in the battle of the Little Big Horn, a series of smaller skirmishes. The battle fields will be the State and Congressional Districts; the battle will be fought by the voters who reside there, many of whom have changed sides in the past year. The voters who had sought hope and change in 2008 have now gotten a taste of that change and found it not to be the sweet taste of liberal progressivism they were promised, but rather the bitter taste of socialism and have lost all hope in The One. They’ve come to reject the promise of higher taxes on nearly everything and the greater government involvement in almost every aspect of their daily life.
The Democrats who will have been the Majority party for 4 years come next November’s election will by then own the economy, along with at least one automaker and it’s financial arm, the two mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie, several banks, the insurance company AIG and possibly a newspaper company or two. If they get their way with the health care bill, you can add your doctor’s office and the local Hospital to a growing list of wards of the government.
To quote the Democrats very own savage pundit James Carville, “It’s the Economy Stupid!” In the mid terms it’s always the economy and a recession that was caused by bad government policies to begin with won’t be cured by equally bad, but different government polices. With an unemployment rate that tops 10% and is rising, it won’t be flesh wounds they’ll be tending come November, it will be scalpings. Here’s hoping that the government run health-care program they covet has plenty of sutures in the ready.
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-Dave Cribbin is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.
November 30th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
No offense, but I think the Little Big Horn analogy is pretty poor….not that Waterloo is any more accurate. I’ll cut Sen. Demint some slack because he wasn’t trying to create some deep analogy or drawn out comparison, he was just trying to convey that Obama’s pending failure in the health care battle will be a decisive turning point against his presidency. I’m sorry but the Custer analogy is ridiculous. I don’t know enough about the background, strategy, or tactics of Little Big Horn to make a thorough comparison, but the outcome of health care reform will not be the massacre of the Democratic Party. I’m sure there’s a better analogy out there, but a pretty good one would be Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
Russia was an unnecessary target of Napoleon, seeing as it posed no real threat to him because of its distance and lack of ambition for total European conquest (though Alexander was rumored to want Poland). His own European conquest was complete, but still under threat from a greater and more pressing concern (the British). Obama pushed healthcare when the economy (the British) was clearly a bigger priority. Although healthcare reform was a concern, he could have easily postponed it and spent his political capital elsewhere more effectively, and possibly consolidated his popularity (empire). Napoleon reached Moscow and won a Pyrrhic victory of sorts, as the Russians razed Moscow and left him without a decisive next step (House passes bill, but highlights abortion issue). He was so close to defeating Russia (struggle to get 60 Senate votes), but his troops were drained of morale and he had squandered so many resources that even he could see victory was out of reach and retreated. The Russian army wasn’t strong enough to beat him, but the exterior conditions did (GOP not strong enough alone to beat Obama). He wasn’t defeated decisively or immediately, but the aura of invincibility was gone and his enemies were emboldened (see the parallel?). The next year would see his empire’s slow decline, he would be embattled from all sides and eventually defeated, resulting in his exile to Elba. Obama will lose significant ground in the House, but he may not lose his majority there, and certainly will retain the Senate. But after the midterms, he, like Clinton post-’94 and Napoleon after his return from exile, will get another chance albeit with far less political capital and fewer allies in Congress (much like Napoleon’s significantly smaller and weaker army post-exile). Napoleon immediately faced united and strong opposition after his return, and couldn’t overcome it. That’s what resulted in Waterloo. I think the Russian invasion has already been set in motion, but we have yet to see if the GOP will be strong enough to force a Waterloo.