The politics have changed and the administration in charge lacks the conviction or honesty to engender the support for a project of the magnitude required. Obama has lied about too many things (1 no 2 no 3 no 4 million jobs created and/or saved, "keep your doctor," Obamacare will lower insurance premiums), broken too many laws (executive amnesty, born in the USA?) and shackled the nation with too much debt (more than doubled the national debt since he took office) for us to consider spending on feel good missions.
The big question is - why? Back then there was a reason. Today, there would be none.
People are against the government, because some of them are finally realizing what a burden it is too society. Some of the services the national government provides are useful (self defense and...?). However, the omnipresent taxes it lays on us are felt everywhere. Wasting money on rockets to the moon would only make things worse.
I find your comments very interesting, as they capture well the 'new thinking' that has come up that I was talking about and exhibit many of the flaws I discussed.
We agree 'the politics have changed' but I think we mean very different things by that, I suspect you mean something along the lines of 'now, we have a lying tyrant in office'.
I'd suggest what's really changed is the mentality of a lot of citizens - for the worse I'd say.
I can point you to all kinds of 'lies' far worse by Kennedy, but which were reacted to differently by most of the nation. One of Kennedy's main campaign points was to run on the claim that there was a 'missile gap' where the Soviets had many more missiles than we did, while the truth was they had something like four to our several hundred. Kennedy initially denied a US role in the Bay of Pigs invasion, quickly exposed as a lie. Kennedy lied to his own supporters that he'd never pick LBJ for the ticket - then did it because it'd help win.
Nevermind the sex or hiding of his severe medical problems.
But none of these turned into an 'oppose all of Kennedy's legislative agenda because he's a lying tyrant' obsession by a large part of the public.
Kennedy could never have governed today nearly as successfully as he did then, because of the massive obstructionism and furious partisan movement he'd face.
Let's look at the 'lies' you cite by Obama as the ground for such passionate opposition.
The number of jobs created - while there are revisions as better data is collected over time, I haven't seen any major issue there, or contradiction to the basic truth on the issue.
(By Obama, that is. On the other hand, Republicans widely lied in the 2012 campaign with false accusations that a positive jobs report was falsified. Are you outraged by that?
Heck, I was just reminded on the Rachel Maddow show about *blatant* lies by the Romney campaign such as the claim Jeep was moving all manufacturing to China. Are you outraged?)
"keep your doctor". This was a basically true statement, with a common sense qualifier left off that should have been included, but no major lie. It was reassuring people who suspected Obamacare was some sort of total government takeover of healthcare that would take away everyone's doctor that that was not the case, that in the normal situations nothing of the sort would happen, most people would keep the same insurance they had, and the same doctor, and the main change was that tens of millions who did not have healthcare would obtain it. What was not said was that if your insurance company cancelled your plan for whatever reason - something that happens regardless of Obamacare - or if you fell into a tiny group who had poor insurance plans that did not meet the new standard of Obamacare to require plans to offer decent benefits - you could lose your doctor. Under 2% of people fell into that group of affected people with plans that had to be improved. So yes, it was a mistake, and one that helped smooth the debate for the passage of Obamacare, but nothing like the massive dishonesty, major issue, scandal you try to portray it as. You are being hysterical to the point of dishonestly representing it as some major issue with Obama.
The final one, Obamacare will lower premiums, well overall it did. Healthcare costs are increasing at the lower rate in 60 years. It has all kinds of provisions that reduce the costs of healthcare and improve the value received by patients. Billions have had to be paid by insurance companies to patients because Obama requires it when the plans spend too little of premiums on actual care for patients.
But that doesn't stop peope from claiming that even the lower increases still remaining are somehow a 'lie by Obama' about lowering costs, or again that the tiny number who were on bad plans who had to get better plans that cost more, the fewer than 2% in that situation, somehow make this a major lie by Obama. Wrong.
So you have nothing but hysteria to back up the 'Obama is a monster' claim on lies.
Then there's the abuse of power allegation. Isn't it funny that I have never seen one single claim about that make any mention at all of the worst obstruction in history he faces?
What he's done has been legal - and taking the modest measures he can for his agenda (oh my gosh, the agenda to destroy America - no, the immigration reform Congress won't pass) allowed under the law generally. What do you REALLY object to in terms of common sense, of fairness, of morality to his action on the 'dream children' other than you hate him so much and he did it? It's as if he pulls a child out of being hit by a car and you say he's a monster for interfering, without any sense of the actual right and wrong of the action.
This is nothing different that president have always done - for example, when Truman wanted to appoint the first black man as a federal judge, and the tea... er, the southern racists in Congress prevented him, he used the recess appointment to get it done - something we now look back on with pride and approval for his 'abusing power' that way.
Obama has issued fewer executive orders than recent president, despite, as I said, the unprecedented obstructionism - but I have to admit, it's a *black guy* doing it.
I'm not accusing there, but one struggles to understand the irrational rage otherwise.
Then you actually - as your second of two arguments for his abusing power - use the claim that he wasn't born in the US as his violating the law.
You don't understand how that says everything about you - the delusion, the irrational rage, the incorrectness of your views factually - and not something bad about Obama.
Finally, you drag our the debt issue.
Now, let's deal with the truth here a minute.
For the history or our country, we never had a massive peacetime debt, until Reagan, who discovered the magic of the political formula of getting voter approval by TALKING against debt, while also getting the political benefit of buying a healthier economy and supporting donor industries by paying for it with MASSIVE BORROWED MONEY. It was the hero of Republicans who talked most against debt and increased it the most until then.
Bush 41 is unremarkable on the issue other than that he mostly continued the huge deficits, slightly reduced as I recall, but made the mistake of trying to sound like Reagan with 'read his lips' while getting caught being a bit responsible by actually supporting a modest tax increase to not increase the debt quite so much (as had Reagan, but without the public outrage).
Then we got a Democrat, what did he do? Those big spending Democrats, he must have really increased the deficit over that hero Reagan right? No, he proposed a deficit-reducing budget. *EVERY* Republican opposed it and said it would destroy our economy, and not one Republican voted for the budget, but it passed by a single vote, and the opposite of what they sould happen, happened - the economy improved AND the deficit went down.
So historical revisionist Republicans like to say, well all the credit goes to the Republican Congress for that, right? No. Clinton took office with a fully Democratic Congress who passed that budget, and it decreased the deficit by similar amount every year as the rest of his presidency when they was a Republican House.
And if that Republican congress deserves so much credit, isn't it funny it's the same Republican Congress that stayed in power when Bush 43 became president and the deficit immediately skyrocketed back up again? So, the facts totally contradict your delusional idea of who does what on the deficit, because you fall for lies - just SAY you are anti-debt, and you are fooled, even if you actually greatly grow it.
Now let's get to Obama. He became president at a time of a huge economic crash, when good economists say that the government's spending SHOULD use debt to keep the economy functioning - he'd be well justified in increasing the deficit for that purpose. And yet - largely because of that obstructionism - what's actually happened is that the deficit is less than half what it was when he took office. He's cut it by more than half.
Now, you do a couple of dishonest things on the issue. One is the mixing up of debt and deficit. You could point out the debt increased a lot under Clinton even as he reduced the deficit every year - what's more informative about what he did? Of course the debt has continued to increase under Obama because we have a deficit, even as he's lowered that deficit from the $1.5 trillion it was when he took office - something you make zero mention of. The other is only pointing out the issue as an Obama issue without any mention of others.
So even your debt point has no merit at all to it. Not only is a lot of the deficit spending defensible for a lot of reasons, but you badly misrepresent Obama relative to others.
So what you do unintentionally is show the sort of difference I was talking about, where there is such a growth of irrational political views and anti-government ideology as to greatly harm our political culture's ability to get anything done - including the 'Obama derangement syndrome' that is part of the problem - rather than what you meant to show, that the political change is that we now have a horrible president in Obama.
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