Obama, Progressives Lack Mandate for True Agenda

...House Republicans, who are at the moment struggling to regain their footing, are in a far stronger position now than four years ago. In 2009, they held 256 seats and faced a confident Speaker Nancy Pelosi leading a cohesive liberal House caucus with a 78-seat majority. Today, Republicans hold a 33-seat majority in the House after sustaining it comfortably in the face of the Obama re-election. More importantly, Obama lost in 219 of the 234 House Republican districts. So, only 15 GOP House members represent districts where President Obama won the vote; that's an historic low in modern American politics.

But what about the issue terrain? It's true that President Obama did campaign on a class warfare hook of "taxing the rich," but a look at the rest of his campaign rhetoric reveals how far the American public has moved our way. The President almost never made mention of his "climate change" cap-and-trade agenda during the campaign. He mentioned his green-energy agenda only in front of core liberal audiences in order to keep his base happy. Clearly, his polling told him his radical environmental agenda was a loser with the electorate. The President repeatedly spoke of the need to rein in the deficit and even cut government spending. Again, he was compelled to move to the right before the election because his able political team knew what we know—the American people are tired of over-spending in Washington, D.C.

In a recent survey by Rasmussen, 62% of people favor across-the board spending cuts. In a different CBS survey, 68% of Americans said that the debt ceiling should not be raised, reflecting the belief that government is over spending and needs to live within a budget.

Compare this with the absolute disconnect from reality reflected by President Obama’s statement to John Boehner that “we don’t have a spending problem,” and you’ll see how weak of a position Obama really has.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/12/Left-Lacks-a-Mandate