Obama’s Real Legacy

Lyndon Johnson believed in a welfare state as a way to lock the poor into voting Democrat for damn near forever. Obama put that strategy on steroids.

He used Obamacare to put hundreds of thousands of families on government healthcare.  

He used the EPA and dozens of other regulatory agencies to strangle the small and medium sized businesses in this country that create the overwhelming majority of new jobs. He did the same thing with small community banks that provide the capital those businesses need. Once working families suffered the predictable soaring unemployment, he increased unemployment benefits making workers dependent on government largesse.

Obama also stepped up aggressive advertising on the availability of welfare programs. He even told states they could eliminate job search requirements to qualify. As a result, millions of workers stopped even looking for work.

Then to make sure even low-skilled jobs were not available, he relaxed laws against illegal immigration and opened our borders to low-wage illegals.

At the same time Obama was working to undermine the economic well-being of American families, he also pursued policies that made us less safe in our neighborhoods and around the world. While publicly praising the military, he decimated defense preparedness and handcuffed combat operations so our war fighters couldn’t do what was necessary to win. He promoted the idea of sanctuary cities and states so federal authorities couldn’t work with local law enforcement to apprehend, detain, or deport criminal illegal aliens.  

Obama also perfected the strategy of divide and conquer as he encouraged class and racial hatred with both his rhetoric and his policy proposals.

While sponsoring the use of law enforcement to pursue his political enemies, he undermined law enforcement’s legitimate efforts to investigate and prosecute criminals. Obama used the government as a political tool to persecute and frustrate those he disagreed with. He unleashed the IRS on conservative organizations, he used the FBI to spy on the Trump campaign, and he imposed policies by executive order that were the proper purview of Congress — many of which have now been ruled illegal and overturned by the courts.

But, before you celebrate Obama’s demise, remember that he also empowered the most radical leaders of the Democrat Party who have virtually taken it over. He also legitimized a growing violent far left wing that isn’t going away any time soon. I’m talking about groups like ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter and many others who would rather burn communities to the ground than participate in a civil debate on America’s future.  

This new, far-left, more divisive, less civil, more violent Democrat Party is Obama’s real legacy. Socialist in their economics, despotic in their politics; the new Democrats look more to leaders like Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega than they do to Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson as did their earlier leaders.

Like the leaders of those failed socialist states, Democrats today believe they are immune to our society’s laws, that their’s is the only speech that should be free, and that anyone who disagrees — especially conservatives — simply deserve to be silenced.

I suppose we conservatives should be grateful for the over-reaching radicalism of the new Democrats. Their heated rhetoric, far left proposals, and uncivil dissent is probably good for the future election prospects of conservatives. Still, I can’t help but believe the brand of despotic politics we’re more used to seeing in places like Cuba and China is bad for America and will ultimately threaten our future.

That’s probably not the legacy Obama set out to achieve, but given the direction Democrats have been heading for the last 10 years, it’s very much the one he deserves.