Americans' Fear of Big Government Bodes Ill for Obama (ContributorNetwork)

COMMENTARY | In his recent speech in Kansas, President Barack Obama mounted a full-throated defense of big government, even suggesting capitalism and free markets have "never worked." A Gallup Poll suggests he is at odds with the American people.

The poll, taken Nov. 28 to Dec. 1, sampled 1,012 adults. It found 64 percent of the respondents believe big government is the biggest threat to the U.S. By contrast, only 26 percent point to big business despite the noise being made by Occupy Wall Street, and 8 percent point to big labor.

If President Obama intends to base his campaign on how the benefits of big government outweigh the freedoms of capitalism, he might want to rethink that strategy. It is never good politics to propose to do something that the vast majority of registered voters fear.

But Obama seems to have gotten puffed up, likely from an inflated view of the numbers and influence of the Occupy Wall Street movement. He is at last, according to Peter Schiff on Townhall, liberated to express what he truly believes. Obama does not fear big government. He yearns for it as other people yearn for food, water, and air.

Obama will not be the first politician enraptured with the glittering vision of a socialist utopia in America. In 1972, George McGovern promised a Great Society on steroids. In 1984 Walter Mondale promised to raise everyone's taxes. Both presidential candidates went down to 49 state defeats.

Obama seems to be headed in that direction, the only difference being he is doing so as a sitting president. This means he also has a record that he has to defend, including a $900 billion stimulus package and a health care reform law that has become a stench in the nostrils of Americans.

The horrors McGovern and Mondale planned to unleash were theoretical thanks to their landslide defeats. Obama has succeeded in instituting the sort of government that the previous candidate only dreamed of. The results have not been pretty.

All, therefore, Obama's Republican opponent has to do is to propose a free market approach to governing. Contrasting that with Obama's big government approach will be the key to victory.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20111213/pl_ac/10669119_americans_fear_of_big_government_bodes_ill_for_obama

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