Josh Kraushaar has an incisive, and for conservatives optimistic, piece up at National Journal on how Barack Obama has changed the Democratic Party, but failed to change the country. He points to Obama’s uncompromising stance on issues like Israel and the Keystone pipeline that normally would not be controversial.

Kraushaar makes two key points: first, these are things that Barack Obama wants to do. There is no real policy issue related to Israel or Keystone that would make them targets, other than his policies fully represent Obama’s worldview. He wants to confront Israel and he wants to prevent the pipeline from being built. The same, of course, could be said for Obamacare, which went so far beyond what the left-right centrist spectrum would have wanted in terms of healthcare reform, as to be a revolutionary challenge to the medical system.

The second point is that the Democratic Party supinely followed Obama down this road, and has paid the electoral price, but that once he’s gone, much, if not most of what he’s done can be unwound.

I’m not so sure about that. Say what you will about Obama, he and his top lieutenants understand the primacy of politics over policy. That is, they understand the best way to get policy passed is by politicizing it. Thus, opposition to healthcare reform means wanting to prevent poor people from getting medical treatment, while pushing for a stronger response to Islamic terrorism means being prejudiced against Islam or eager for another quagmire in the Middle East. That way, opposition to Obama is frozen and put on the defensive (yes, a classic Alinsky move). The blundering, largely incompetent Republican response to his policies thanks to weak leadership has only made his task easier.

More than that, Obama understands that changing the bureaucracy is the best, perhaps a foolproof way of making his policies permanent. No government bureaucracy born is ever killed. Obamacare, in one form or another, is almost certainly likely to be here forever, especially as the Democrats will make the case that any repeal or rollback will strip millions of their insurance coverage. Same with the myriad invisible regulations that have flowed from presidential memoranda or executive actions. Even determining what those regulatory and bureaucratic changes are is a challenge for an already overburdened Congress. Thus, most of them will stay intact. And, as for immigration, if he gets away with his executive order, there is no turning back (just as there wasn’t after Reagan’s amnesty and Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration law).

Finally, Obama has set a new template for ignoring the law and normalizing the capriciousness of executive privilege. Even his reversals suffered at the hands of the Supreme Court have not dented his zeal for dong what “justice” demands and ignoring both the democratic process and legality. A toothless Legislative that lets him get away with it, and indeed is corrupted by him on the Democratic side, abetted by the courts that have for far too long deferred to the presidency, is simply setting the stage for a further imbalance in the separation of powers.

Thus, while Kraushaar is correct that much of the country does not support the Obama revolution, their lives will forever be changed by it. Obama may well be far more successful in “fundamentally transforming” the United States than anyone could have anticipated. There will be lots of evasion, work-arounds, some repeal and rollback, but expanding the government’s purview over more and more of American life has been a constant under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Obama has simply taken it to the next level, regardless of the wishes of most of his countrymen. That’s what committed, ruthless, powerful leaders do. And it’s what divided and powerless followers suffer.