With Election Day upon us, conservative voters and activists should think globally and act visually. Four simple illustrations will help them and other citizens consider and discuss important issues as America chooses its newest crop of leaders.
The first proves the incredibly close connection between Obama and Senate Democrats who now claim never to have met the man. As Obama himself explained October 20 on the Reverend Al Sharpton’s radio show, “These are all folks who vote with me.” And they do so in huge numbers, as the nearby graphic demonstrates.
Senate Democrats in the Obama Fan Club keep trying to escape Obama’s orbit. And, like a giant black hole, Obama keeps sucking them back in. (Click here for a PDF of this graphic.)
The second visual shows just how badly Obama has broken his promise of offering America “quality, affordable health care” via Obamacare, as he pledged. From some 6.2 million medical plans cancelled last year to doctors whom patients liked but no longer can keep, Obamacare turned out to be a $2.6 trillion lie. This humongous new entitlement’s affordability was supposed to be among its chief benefits. However, as Jed Graham of Investor’s Business Daily recently showed, health premiums are zooming skyward in most parts of the country.
IDB analyzed the costs for Obamacare’s cheapest “bronze” plans in 16 cities across America. A 40-year-old non-smoker earning $26,260 (225 percent of the poverty line) would see bronze-plan expenses increase in 12 of these 16 cities. Premiums would drop 30 percent in Hartford, Connecticut, and 6 percent in Portland, Maine. However, they would jump 38 percent in Providence, Rhode Island, and a stunning 64 percent in Seattle, Washington. Colorado voters might focus on the 26 percent increase that such 40-year-olds will have to shell out in Denver.
All told, Obamacare’s bronze-plan premiums for people in these cities and this demographic will grow by 13.9 percent, on average. And this figure includes the program’s government subsidies.
So, despite its gargantuan expense and inconvenience, Obama’s giant redistribution machine costs real people real money. Despite Democrats’ magical thinking, it appears that one cannot get something for nothing, after all.
Third, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee launched ads in late October attacking Republican Senate challengers for allegedly threatening Medicare.
“When Scott Brown represented Massachusetts, he voted to cut Medicare,” declares the announcer in one spot against the man challenging incumbent Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.).
“You work hard earning your Medicare,” states another ad, as a graphic says that “Cotton Voted to Cut Medicare.” This commercial is designed to help Senator Mark Pryor (D., Ark.) pick off Republican Representative Tom Cotton.
And Senator Mark Udall (D., Colo.) hopes to bury GOP Representative Cory Gardner with an ad that asks, “Why would Cory Gardner vote to cut education and essentially end Medicare?”
The DSCC’s chutzpah has drained America’s known reserves of guttural fricative.
Shaheen, Pryor, Udall, and the other Democrats — and zero Republicans — who enacted Obamacare are 1,000 percent guilty of cutting Medicare. And not by a little. As this Heritage Foundation graph proves, Democrats chopped $716 billion from Medicare between 2013 and 2022 in order to finance Obamacare. This includes $17 billion sliced out of hospice services for elderly Americans on the verge of death. Democrats carved another $66 billion from home-health services. Democrats gouged $260 billion out of hospital services.
The DSCC has no right to moan about Republican votes on Medicare when Democrats hacked nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars from Medicare to underwrite Obamacare.
Shame on them!
If all of this fills you with disappointment about Obama, you are not alone.
After Obama’s nearly flawless 2008 presidential campaign, many Americans who voted against him thought that, at least, he would run a smooth, professional, and well-oiled government. While we might oppose Obama’s policies, surely their execution would be ably managed.
Wrong!
From the Beer Summit to Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS political abuse of conservatives, HealthCare.gov, the VA-hospitals meltdown, the Bergdahl/Guantanamo-detainee swap, rule by decree, ISIS, Ebola, a top adviser calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “chickens***,” and much more, the Obama years have featured one embarrassment, after another fiasco, after another scandal, after another broadside against the Constitution. And “competence” has become a foreign word in Obama Land.
Those who voted for Obama must be disappointed to see so much go so wrong. As Obama’s popularity has plunged, and as even Maryland voters fled a rally at the sound of his voice, liberal hearts must plunge.
And nearly every American shared in the pride of electing our first black chief executive, who, surely, would preside over the final burial of this nation’s racial hatchet. Obama basked in 70 percent job approval as he entered office. No doubt, Dr. King’s dream of a land where “the color of our skin” didn’t matter was close at hand.
Wrong again!
From Trayvon Martin to Ferguson, Mo., to Democrats’ relentless playing of the race card (e.g., flyers telling blacks to vote for Kay Hagan lest lynching return), Americans are at each other’s throats over ethnicity more than in decades.
All of this makes Obama a massive disappointment across the board.
I modified artist Shephard Fairey’s world-famous image to capture how Hope has devolved into Disappointment.
As Americans vote today, please share this graphic with friends. Better yet, print this PDF and place it somewhere where people can see it and remember the country that Obama promised and ponder the nation that he has delivered.
— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.