Obama Lost *Because* of His Early Legislative Wins, Not Despite Them

Over at
The Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel chalks up broad
Republican gains in the midterms solely to the GOP’s negativism.
Sen Mitch McConnell, she writes, “won his majority by
brilliantly waging a partisan, dishonest, unrelenting policy of
obstruction.”

At National Review‘s The Corner
blog, Reason contributor and Mercatus Center
economist Veronique de Rugy counters by pointing out some
inconvenient truths.

…vanden Heuvel’s lament would only really
make sense if Obama hadn’t actually gotten all that he wanted
during the first two years of his first term. Remember
the huge stimulus bill that was supposed
to prevent
the unemployment rate from exceeding 8 percent? How
about Dodd Frank and the promise that it
would successfully regulate the big banks, save us from the
moral hazard created by “Too
Big to Fail,” and address systemic
risk? And let’s not forget Obamacare and its
promise to
fix health care, provide health
insurance to
everyone (especially
the chronically poor), lower
premiums, and help
the long-term budget
outlook. Does vanden Heuvel really
want to blame the
HealthCare.gov debacle on Republicans? She can
certainly try, I suppose.

And then, of course, if you turn to things like
the war
on drugs, immigration,transparency,
or all the scandals that took place under this administration (VA,
the IRS, and Fast and Furious, etc,
etc), vanden Heuvel shouldn’t be surprised that
Obama has become unpopular even with his own base.

That’s putting it mildly. One of the
reasons why
libertarian ideas are getting a longer look than ever before is
precisely because both conservative Republicans and liberal
Democrats have gotten to implement their visions in the recent
past. Both major parties and the ideologies they represent have
gotten to do exactly what they wanted to do and in each case the
only clear result was…putting the other side in power.
Time for an alternative, maybe?

De Rugy concludes:

Just as Republicans need to admit that the Bush years were
hugely disappointing for those of us who believe in
free markets and small government, Democrats should admit that
it’s the failures and shortcomings of the Obama administration that
have put the GOP back in control of Congress.

Full thing there.