No Thanks, Mr. President

With Republican governors considering rejecting President Obama’s stimulus gift money, banks and General Motors now saying they can make it on their own and don’t need money (or the government strings attached) and the majority of top economists giving Obama a failing grade on the economy according to a Wall Street Journal/ABC News poll, it is looking as if the bloom may be coming off the rose at the Obama honeymoon.

Public opinion on the new president also appears to be catching up with economists’ sentiments, and is starting to show signs of decline, as Obama backed down this week on one of his key campaign promises — to curb the practice of earmarks. With Congress inserting nearly 9,000 pork projects into the omnibus spending bill written last year, including some from then-Sen. Obama, the public has reason to view the Obama administration as part and parcel of Washington’s business as usual. It should not come as a surprise that Obama has lost almost all Republican support and a significant chunk of independent support, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey.

A few more days of the good news on the stock market can help, but it may also cause many Americans to wonder if the economic crisis was ever as bad as President Obama claimed it was, or if his talking down the economy was an effort to cause it to dip so that a rebound would help him politically. After all, his own chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, actually said out loud, where people could hear him, that it would be a shame to “waste” a crisis.

Barack Obama certainly has made the most of the economic “crisis” in terms of ramming through his far-left agenda to remake American society. But it may prove to be a greater political risk than he and his overeager advisers were prepared for, as Americans, bit by bit, start catching on.

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