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09.15.2011 2

September has not been kind to Obama

Obama and Solyndra

By Rick Manning — President Obama has suffered through a very tough time since his return from Martha’s Vineyard.

As a multiple choice question, choose which of the following items have occurred since Obama’s summer vacation ended:

  1. The President tried to have an additional State of the Union speech to push his new jobs plan, only to discover that he would get to speak on the same day as the NFL’s Opening Day kick off .
  2. Stocks on Wall Street went into a 300 point tailspin immediately after the jobs speech.
  3. The Solyndra solar energy company that he used as a prop to demonstrate the success of his first $800 billion plus green jobs stimulus package went belly up, and was raided by armed agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  4. Obama’s disapproval rating hit an all-time high according to a CNN poll jumping to 55 percent.
  5. Congressional Democrats attack the Obama “Jobs” bill because it raises taxes.
  6. Obama goes to North Carolina to push for his jobs bill at the company owned by a contributor which has been moving manufacturing jobs to Costa Rica.
  7. A Republican won Anthony Weiner’s congressional seat in New York City for the first time since Calvin Coolidge was president in the 1920s largely due to the President’s unpopularity with core Democratic Party voters.
  8. It was announced that poverty rates are up more than 14 percent since 2009.
  9. The Census Bureau announced that household income, adjusted for inflation, dropped a stunning 2.3 percent last year to the same level as 1996.
  10. All of the above.

If you answered 10, all of the above, you win the prized ham.

A President who was elected with a seemingly magical ability to connect with people has run aground, and it appears that the more he appears on television, the less people think he knows what he is doing.

But of all the events listed above, the Solyndra Energy failure has the potential to devastate the President’s political future.

At the exact time when he is trying to convince the American public that Congress needs to trust him with another $450 billion or so of taxpayer money to stimulate the economy, the FBI is raiding an Obama Administration stimulus misadventure which funneled more than half a billion dollars to a company controlled by a major Obama financial contributor.

A president who was riding high on a wave of good news and popularity would easily withstand the questions about both the ethics and prudence of the Solyndra failed loan.  However, a president facing 14 million unemployed, and an overall electorate which is rapidly coming to the conclusion that he doesn’t know what he is doing doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt.

The fact that ABC News and not Fox has been the major player in the release of information about the Solyndra loans is a strong signal that the seeming free pass this President has received from the main stream media may be ending.  After all, there is little that the media likes more than a scandal involving money and power.

The failed Solyndra loan also cuts to the quick the “green jobs” claim that was the foundation of the selling of the first stimulus package.  The dawning perception that Obama’s green jobs initiative unwisely spent money to benefit his political contributors and allies, while not delivering many jobs is devastating to the President’s credibility.

This failure combined with a revolt among some union workers against the job-killing environmental edicts of the Environmental Protection Agency are the beginning of the foundational crack of the Obama coalition of labor and environmentalists.  Two groups who have diametrically opposed interests which have been traditionally put aside due to their support for big government solutions and intervention.

Ironically, while Obama gets pounded and is being investigated for his failed green investing, radical green protestors are being arrested in front of the White House because they want the President to stop a job producing oil pipeline that will bring oil from Canada to be processed in the United States.

And all of this is without even mentioning the enflamed Middle East, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Chinese, Russians, Greece, Europe or the rapidly failing international banking system.

To say the least, the first fifteen days of September 2011 are not going to be put into the Obama Administration scrapbook of success.  However, historians may point to them as the time when Obama reached the political tipping point from which he could not recover.

Only time will tell.

Rick Manning is the Director of Communications for Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Rick on Twitter at @RManning957.

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