A Winning Message, But Is It Too Late?

It is extraordinary that only now, a week before Election Day, have Barack Obama’s beliefs and policies come into focus. After months of “hope,” “change” and “I’m not George Bush,” the truth has finally tumbled out: Barack Obama wants to redistribute America’s wealth, raise taxes on those who create jobs, create vast new handout programs styled as “tax relief,” and appoint judges who will radically redefine the relationship between American citizens and their government.

This last point is especially remarkable. The Founders feared arbitrary government power, and drafted a Constitution and amendments intended to protect your property from expropriation. Obama would stand this constitutional framework on its head by appointing judges who believe that the Founders were wrong, and their “error” can be corrected by court decisions to the effect that the federal government has a constitutional duty to carry out a radical redistribution of wealth.

John McCain is now doing a pretty good job of framing the stark contrasts between his own policies and American political traditions on one hand, and Obama’s radical prescriptions on the other. These are some excerpts from a speech that McCain is delivering today in Hershey, Pennsylvania:

We’ve learned more about Senator Obama’s real goals for our country over the last two weeks than we learned over the past two years, and that only because Joe the plumber asked him a question in Ohio. That’s when Senator Obama revealed he wants to quote “spread the wealth around.”

Now, Joe didn’t ask for Senator Obama to come to his house, and he didn’t ask to be famous. He certainly didn’t ask for the political attacks on him from the Obama campaign. Joe’s dream is to own a small business that will create jobs, and the attacks on him are an attack on small businesses all over the country. Small businesses employ 84 percent of Americans, and we need to support small businesses, not tax them.

After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Senator Obama’s economic goal is: to spread the wealth. In a radio interview revealed this week, he said the same thing — that one of the quote, “tragedies” of the civil rights movement is that it didn’t bring about “redistributive change.”

You see, Senator Obama believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs. He said that even though lower taxes on investment help our economy, he favors higher taxes on investment for quote “fairness.” There’s nothing “fair” about driving our economy into the ground. We all suffer when that happens, and that is the problem with Senator Obama’s approach to our economy. He is more interested in controlling wealth than in creating it … in redistributing money instead of spreading opportunity. I am going to create wealth for all Americans, by creating opportunity for all Americans.

Senator Obama is running to be Redistributionist in Chief. I’m running to be Commander in Chief. Senator Obama is running to spread the wealth. I’m running to create more wealth. Senator Obama is running to punish the successful. I’m running to make everyone successful.

Senator Obama has made a lot of promises. First he said people making less than 250,000 dollars would benefit from his plan, then this weekend he announced in an ad that if you’re a family making less than 200,000 dollars you’ll benefit — but yesterday, right here in Pennsylvania, Senator Biden said tax relief should only go to “middle class people — people making under 150,000 dollars a year.” It’s interesting how their definition of rich has a way of creeping down. At this rate, it won’t be long before Senator Obama is right back to his vote that Americans making just 42,000 dollars a year should get a tax increase. We can’t let that happen.

These are effective themes, I think. Combined with McCain’s other messages they probably could have defeated an Obama who came out of the closet last summer rather than coming out, inadvertently, two weeks before the election. Whether enough time remains for Obama’s exposure as the candidate of redistribution to turn the election around remains to be seen.

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