I remember watching the Brady Bunch as a kid. It was on for an hour every night between 5 and 6 or 6 and 7. Something like that. 2 Episodes back to back. I must have seen every episode at least a million times. I was thinking recently about a particular episode, it may have even been a 2-parter. It was the one where Greg met a girl who thought he was a great singer. She introduced him to a record producer and they were going to make an album. The catch was, they wanted him as a solo artist. Greg was already in a band with his brothers and sisters. What would he do? Should he turn his back on his family for what may be his only shot at stardom? It turns out that he did. He was going to be the next Johnny Bravo. But when he heard the record, it didn't sound anything like him at all. The girl and the producer only wanted him because he fit the suit. When he started making noises about his own songs and his own talent and artistic integrity, they told him to get with the program or get out.
What does this have to do with Barack Obama? I'm glad you asked. Obama was plucked from obscurity, an unknown community organizer from Illinois, and thrust into the vanguard of the Democratic party for a reason. He was a liberal from a liberal state, but he was palatable to the mainstream of America. A smooth talking, articulate, attractive man with the right pedigree and the right connections, he was the perfect choice to lead the left-wing of the party into the future. He was introduced to all the right people and said all the right things. He managed to beat back Hillary Clinton in the primary and routed McCain in the general election. Along with growing majorities in the house and the senate, this was proof to the moonbats that they finally had a mandate from the American people to institute the kind of policies they had been dreaming about for a century, and they had just the guy to lead them.
But a funny thing happened on the way to socialist utopia. The American people woke up. They began to see through the fancy rhetoric and telegenic looks. They started to look at what was being shoved through congress and decided that this was not what they voted for. We wanted change, but not like this. The Tea Party became a bonified movement, and many independents saw in it an alternative answer to the problems we are facing as a nation. They began to abandon the Good Ship Obamapop in droves. Young people followed quickly behind, not necessarily to the Tea Party, but away from the Democrats. The election in November was as much a referendum on America's youth as the incumbents who were voted out. Young people were either disillusioned, disenfranchised, or had simply moved on to the next cool thing. Obama and his party were a passing fad, like the hula hoop or the pet rock. When the bloom came off the rose, most of them buried their faces back into their Iphones or Ipads or whatever other gadgets they all have to have. The true believers felt like they had been lied to. When you tell someone in their early 20's that they are the ones they've been waiting for, and that your election will signal the oceans to recede and the earth to begin to heal, they tend to believe you. When you don't deliver, they tend to get upset.
So now Obama no longer holds the majority in both houses to push through his far-left agenda. The clearest demonstration of this was his inability to pass a compromise bill to extend the Bush tax cuts to all but the wealthiest Americans in the senate, even in a lame-duck session. It looks like the tax rates will stay the same for the foreseeable future. But now Obama is in a tight spot. The far left is unhappy with him. They are the true idealogues. They are starting to realize that Obama is really a politician first, and a moonbat second. The only idealogy that matters to politicians is their own self-preservation. If Obama wants to be re-elected, he'll have to pull a Clinton and move toward the center, but if he does that, the kooks will lose their minds. They are already making noises about a challenge in the primary in 2012 from the left. He keeps pleading for patience. They seem to be saying that if Obama can't do what needs to be done, they'll find someone who can. After all, the only reason they chose him is because he fit the suit.