President Obama told NBC's Matt Lauer in an interview Sunday, "I deserve a second term." Well, let's see.

He had the courage to tell the Supreme Court off for daring to defy him in its campaign finance law ruling. And he did it during his State of the Union speech, when they weren't in a position to object, showing just what a marvelous tactician he is.

He was not about to be stymied by an obstructionist Republican House that didn't buy into his Euro-fashionable idea that we're all going to die from catastrophic man-made global warming. So when those knuckleheads wouldn't pass cap and trade, his Environmental Protection Agency lawlessly imposed its own emission standards. He showed those Republicans.

He was sick and tired of our being in Iraq, an action approved by a joint resolution of Congress, so he telegraphed a date certain to withdraw. But he wasn't going to let Republicans think he couldn't flex his own muscles in the nominal cause of freedom, so he one-upped those dolts again by intervening in Libya without consulting Congress at all, much less getting its approval.

When he crammed through Obamacare against the people's will, he adroitly claimed he was acting on our behalf. Every year he's been in office, his deficits have greatly exceeded $1 trillion, and he is on course to double the national debt in five years and triple it in 10. How many presidents could pull that off?

Obama's latest homeowner mortgage relief plan is perfect for him: It both is consistent with his ideology -- duh -- and allows him to buy more votes with someone else's money, all the while pretending there is in fact such a thing as a free lunch.

The painfully superficial liberal approach to poverty gets old, as does its corollary tenet that conservatives who reject liberals' failed ideas lack compassion. Indeed, Obama seemed to devote half the words in his prayer breakfast speech to proving that Scripture compels liberal policies.

Obama's latest proof that he cares more than we do is his proposal to "give every responsible homeowner in America a chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks."

This has all the elements. He frames the program as applying only to responsible mortgagors; he personally gets credit for handing out this money from his legendary "stash"; government, not the market, dictates what the interest rate will be; government will wave its magic wand forbidding "red tape" and bureaucratic obstacles; and banks, one of his favorite targets, are demonized and lined up to be punished.

But haven't we had enough of this man's top-down manipulation of the market in the guise of helping people? Is he ever to be held accountable for similar failed programs he's already tried? How about that $75 billion mortgage relief plan he implemented in 2009? You know, the one he said would "give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild"? The one he said would save 7 million to 9 million mortgages.

In the intense heat of the present, it is easy to forget even the relatively recent past, but it seems to me that this GOP primary season is more acrimonious than the past few, probably because the stakes are so high.

When I've noted that this is the most important presidential election of our lifetimes, a few excitability-resistant conservative friends have said, "They have been saying that about every election for more than a generation." My response to that is:

"Yes, and it's probably been true every time. As we march inexorably toward socialism by incremental steps, the need to elect political leaders to take steps to reverse it increases on a linear plane. But with President Obama, we're advancing not by incremental steps, but by giant leaps, hurtling toward statism with alarming alacrity. Every day that passes before we implement entitlement reform, for example, the geometric accumulation of vested benefits makes reform more imperative -- and more difficult. So yes, every national election of the past generation or so has probably been more important than the immediately preceding one, but 2012 is dramatically more urgent. Based on the cavalier manner with which Obama is lawlessly thwarting the Constitution and the people's will, it is hard to imagine what kind of tyrannical executive power grabs he'd try (and accomplish) if re-elected, even with an opposing Congress. We are already on autopilot to national bankruptcy, and if we don't
ram it into reverse soon, America as we have known it could be gone, at least for many years."

Conservatives are fighting among themselves about not just who the best candidate would be but also who is most electable. Sure, electability has always been an issue, but now some are say...
Publ.Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:48:18 -0500

New Column: Obama's Misstatements on the Union

Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation.

Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space.

Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record.

He said, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more." But everyone knows he's had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, "Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse."

Obama said, "I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors." Well, that's mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the "programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors" is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan's plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.

Republican internecine squabbles this primary season seem to turn on the vying candidates' respective electability against incumbent Barack Obama. But if even uber-liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has finally awakened to President Obama's arrogance, what does it say about his electability?

It's understandable that a lib would take so long to turn on the messiah, having invested so much in his presidency. But I wonder whether these people ever realize how late they are to the party and how utterly devoid of profundity their belated epiphanies are.

Dowd starts off her latest column describing Obama's opening appearance at a fundraiser at the Apollo in Harlem: "For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected."

Unless you are a liberal utopian, such as my friend Mark Levin describes in his latest masterpiece, "Ameritopia," you wouldn't place so much faith in one deliberately mysterious man to usher in a new, unspecified era, and you especially wouldn't hold on to the painfully unrealistic hope that after three years, this man will finally present himself to be someone he has never been.

Savor a few of the tardy revelations Dowd has now come to see with pungent clarity: