Forecasted Buyer's Remorse

Caveat: The intention of this post is not necessarily to opine but to state matters of fact. I'm not evaluating the merits of certain liberal positions, but merely showing how many non-liberals seem to have voted for a liberal for President. The full intention of this post is designed to track what I thought was a foreseeable phenomenon 4-5 months ago.

There is a problem when people do not think about issues in Presidential campaigns. An honest elder of mine asked me on election day last November, "So do you think the country has become that much more liberal? Do you see a trend in a liberal direction?" I had to confess that I didn't. I said, "Obama won because he was better on tv and because he had more money, and so I don't think this has anything to do with the policies of Obama." I wanted to say more. I wanted to say that many Americans had fooled themselves into thinking they voted for the guy that agreed with them on political issues when the truth is that many Americans had not done so (and if Americans wanted a moderate that was truly bi-partisan, they should have voted for McCain). Here's my proof, as columnist John Warren lays out:

On one issue after another, from bail-outs to the environment, Medicare,
life issues, foreign policy, the polls now tend to confirm what this pundit and
a few other incorrigible reactionaries knew from the outset: that a plurality of
American voters had embraced Mr. Obama not because of, but despite the policies
he was signalling. They most certainly liked the man and his "temperament," and
they most certainly wanted the Republicans out. But it did not follow that they
wanted their government to lurch to the left.

Here's more confirmation of a similar phenomenon:

In the new National Public Radio poll conducted by the Democratic polling
company Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and its Republican counterpart, Public Opinion Strategies, 42 percent of the 800 likely voters surveyed March 10 to 14 said that if the next congressional election were held today they would vote for
the Republican candidate; an identical percentage of respondents said they would
vote for the Democratic one. For several years, Democrats held a substantial
lead on this question.

You see, Americans tend to support image over substance, sound bites over discourse, and slogans over reasoned argument. Those simplicities could favor either party at various times, but this time it favored Obama. We wanted Bush out, and we liked the way this guy talked. But oh man, we have some buyer's remorse with the way Obama is pushing far-left policy. Don't believe me? Writer and radio personality Garrison Keillor wholeheartedly endorsed Obama in February 2008 on the promise of "hope" and "change," but now he seems nothing short of irate at Obama's and other Democrats' policies in his most recent column. Some highlights:

I wish that the politicians lining up to drop cherry bombs in our toilets
could meet the AIG family....

It’s painful for me to
leave AIG, but I am not comfortable with the government owning 80 percent of our company.

Call me old-fashioned, but that is just plain socialism to me, and this latest frenzy of plain old class warfare fomented by an anti-business administration has convinced me that it’s time to move on.

To Keillor and many other embittered Americans, I say: what on earth were you expecting! This guy had a very liberal voting record and no executive experience. You got what you voted for. And now we all have to endure these ____ policies [insert your own adjective].