The REAL Political Legacy Of Bill Clinton Is NOT What The Left Wants You To Know

I responded to a typical weasel comment with enough facts and frankly enough words to turn the truth about the Clinton presidency into an article.  Here’s the typical weasel comment:

This post is a bunch of lies.. Clinton left a surplus

And my response:

Just can’t get away from stupid people, can I?

U.S. National Debt

09/30/1993    –    $4,411,488,883,139.38

09/30/1994    –    $4,692,749,910,013.32

09/29/1995    –    $4,973,982,900,709.39

09/30/1996    –    $5,224,810,939,135.73

09/30/1997    –    $5,413,146,011,397.34

09/30/1998    –    $5,526,193,008,897.62

09/30/1999    –    $5,656,270,901,615.43

09/30/2000    –    $5,674,178,209,886.86

09/30/2001    –    $5,807,463,412,200.06

These are official Treasury Dept taken from the Treasury’s site.  The numbers between 1993 and 1999 are here and the numbers from 2000 to 2001 are here.

I want you to notice, you deluded dumbass, that every single year of the Clinton presidency the national debt went UP.  THAT IS A FACT.  In the very real world, Bill Clinton never left us with so much as a penny of “surplus.”  Every single year of Slick Willie’s presidency, we got more debt and then more debt.

Bill Clinton assumed office in 1993.  Two years later, in 1994, the people were so angry at the fact that “Clinton gold” turned out to be Iron Pyrite that they voted overwhelmingly for Republicans in the greatest historic asskicking of all time.  Clinton lost both the House and the Senate to Republicans, and in fact never got either back for his entire presidency.

Bill Clinton said “the era of big government is over” in January 1996, which put the kibosh on liberal ideas for the rest of the Clinton presidency as Clinton governed as a moderate Republican from that point on.

In 1997, the Taxpayer Relief Act was passed by the Republican House and the Republican Senate before being signed into law by Bill Clinton.  As a result of those REPUBLICAN TAX REFORMS, federal income tax revenues surged just as they ALWAYS surge when the American people are allowed to keep more of their own money and invest that money far better than bureaucratic government EVER has or ever WILL.  And as a result, we actually briefly got to a federal budget surplus.  Because of Republicans and because “the era of big government was over” and because Democrats had had their asses kicked and ONLY because of those things.

It’s interesting.  Republicans controlled both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate when we actually got our “balanced budget.”  And yet historically somehow the mainstream media gave Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party ALL the credit and the Republican majorities that had actually passed all the legislation that created that balanced budget zero credit.  It’s particularly amazing given the fact that Barack Obama controlled the White House, held a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, AND controlled the House of Representatives his first two years in office, but the failure of the Obama economic policy is blamed on the fact that for two of Obama’s first four years Republicans held the House.  Basically, Democrats can never be blamed and must be given all the credit; whereas Republicans cannot receive any credit and must be given all the blame.

The same people who constantly lecture the Republicans about “obstructionism” somehow never recall the years when George Bush was confronted with massive Democrat obstructionism.  Obstructionism, was, of course, good and noble when Democrats were blocking virtually every single thing Bush tried to accomplish.  It is only evil if Republicans try to block anything their messiah Obama wants to do.

Now, sadly, 9/11 happened because Bill Clinton left America weak and blind.  Why did America get attacked on 9/11?  Because Bill Clinton showed so much weakness in 1993 in Somalia that a man we would one day know very well said:

“Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…” — Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden began to prepare for a massive attack on America.  Oh, yes, he and his fellow terrorists hit America again and again: they hit the World Trade Center for the first time in 1993.  In 1996 they hit the Khobar Towers where hundreds of American servicemen were living.  In 1998 two embassies in Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) were bombed and destroyed by terrorists.  And in 2000, terrorists hit and severely damaged the U.S.S. Cole.  And Bill Clinton proved bin Laden’s thesis correct by doing exactly NOTHING.

Meanwhile, all throughout the Clinton presidency, al Qaeda was preparing to strike us.  They brought in all the terrorists who would devastate us with their second attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 2001 during Bill Clinton’s watch.

America was both weak and blind due to Bill Clinton’s gutting both the military and our intelligence capability.  And of course, being blind and unable to see what was coming would hurt us deeply:

Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”

In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.

Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.”  The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.

“Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “

After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.

“Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”

And so we were hit on 9/11 and were completely blindsided by the attack because Bill Clinton gutted the military and the intelligence budget leaving us weak and blind.  And of course our spending skyrocketed because of the DotCom economic collapse that Bill Clinton left for George Bush that happened on Clinton’s watch but gutted $7.1 trillion in American wealth (almost as much as the Great Recession, btw) and which collapsed the value of the Nasdaq Valuation by fully 78% of its value as Bush was still trying to clean all the porn that the Clinton White House had left on the White House computers.  And so Bill Clinton handed George Bush a massive recession and like whip cream on top of his economic disaster he handed George Bush an even more massive terrorist attack.

But, hey, don’t worry.  Barack Obama is making all the same mistakes that Clinton made and then a whole bunch of even dumber mistakes that Clinton didn’t make.

Anyway, as you keep hearing that Obama will pave the streets with gold because Bill Clinton paved the streets with gold, please realize #1 that Clinton hardly ever paved the streets with gold and #2 realize that Barack Obama has not and will not govern the way Bill Clinton governed.

Do you know what bothers me the most about Obama’s reelection?  It’s that we have entered a profoundly different reality as a nation.  Barack Obama did NOT get reelected because he gave us a strong economy.  And both the polls before and AFTER the election document that many of the people who actually voted for Barack Obama believed that Mitt Romney would have given us a better economy.

Obama’s economic policy was a complete unmitigated disaster.  But what you need to understand is that a terrible economy makes for good politics for Democrats.  Because the worse the economy gets the more that increasingly amoral Americans will demand a stronger government safety net and welfare state.  Such that the worse Obama does economically the better he and Democrats will actually fair politically.

The beast is coming.

Obama Promised Dems Trip To Disneyworld; Failed To Mention It Involved Crashing Plane Into Florida

[The above title derives from a quip made by Newt Gingrich on the Greta Van Susteren program, for what it’s worth].

Unless “hope and change” meant total Democrat annihilation (which it does for me, anyway), I would submit that something went wrong on Obama’s trip to Utopia.

There was a cartoon from months ago that pretty much summarized the election results from November 2:

And the American people – and most certainly conservatives – tried to warn them.  Repeatedly.

Remember Virginia?  When Republican Bob McDonnell won the governorship in a major setback to Obama? Remember  Massachusetts? And the shock defeat by Republican Scott Brown to win Ted Kennedy’s seat? Remember New Jersey?  Where Chris Christie defeated Obama-backed Jon Corzine with independents running away from Democrats to give Republicans the governor’s mansion in the bluest of blue states? Remember all the town halls across the nation?  Where senior citizens were red-faced furious at Democrats for passing ObamaCare? Remember the tea party events across the country? And how they just kept getting bigger and bigger even as the Democrats and the mainstream media first ridiculed them and then demonized them?

Meanwhile, now former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi assured everyone that Democrats would keep control of the House.  And assured them “for sure.” And daring Republicans to “bring it on” in the process.  And kept assuring.  And then assuring some more.

And it wasn’t just Nancy Pelosi who lived in a bubble.  Lots of prominent Democrats did.  Such as DNC chairman Tim Kaine, who was predicting Democrats would keep the House of Representatives only days ago.

And, of course, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen joined San Fran Nan the very day of the election to loudly assure the world that the Democrats would keep their dominance in the House.

And, even after the admitted shellacking, Barack Obama demonstrated loudly and clearly today that he STILL doesn’t get it.

I don’t know if Obama and Pelosi cared one way or another; but Democrats were slaughtered for the sake of Obama’s incredibly unpopular agenda.  Obama kept using the metaphor of a car and a ditch, but no matter how many “Danger, Bridge Out!” warning signs he passed, he refused to change his course as he drove his party right off a cliff.

It was not just a slaughter; it was a historic slaughter:

WASHINGTON — Republicans rolled up historic gains to seize control of the House on Tuesday, as voters disenchanted with the economy, President Obama and government dealt a strong rebuke to Democrats in every corner of the country.

The GOP ousted Democratic freshmen and influential veterans, including some considered safe just weeks ago. Republicans piled up their biggest House gains since they added 80 seats in 1938: By early Wednesday, they had netted 60 formerly Democratic seats and led in four more. The GOP victory eclipsed the 54-seat pickup by the so-called “revolution” that retook the House in 1994 for the first time in 40 years and the 56-seat Republican gain in 1946.

And it’s actually even worse than that.  Because the most recent counts show that Republicans have seized 64 seats from Democrats.  With more elections still not yet called, that could well add to the number.

What we just witnessed was the biggest pick up by any party in any election since 1932.

Here’s the latest political map.  For you liberals, you are the ones who are now so marginalized you practically might as well not even exist:

I mean, literally, I have more legitimate grounds to deny the existence of liberals than I do the Tooth Fairy right about now.

And just two years ago you so incredibly arrogantly ruled the universe.  And you were lecturing Republicans on the extinction of the Grand Old Party.

You were a ship of fools, captained by even grander fools.

But it gets even worse.  Because we haven’t talked about the governor’s races yet:

Governors-Stunning loss for Democrats
Published in November 3rd, 2010

America changed overnight in a very big way. Based upon election results at this moment, sixty percent of our country will now be led by Republican Governors. That number may grow as a few states with uncertain election results are solidified.

Yesterday, there were 37 Governor’s races and Republicans won 24 of them. Democrats took only nine, Independents took one and three are too close to call at this moment (Connecticut, Minnesota and Vermont).

This is an absolutely stunning loss for Democrats who, prior to the election, held 26 states to the 24 held by Republicans.

The balance of power has shifted and this will impact the 2012 elections as well as redistricting that will occur in each state as a result of the 2010 Census.

But as bad as that is, it gets even worse than that.  We’re talking about complete devastation for Democrats in the state legislatures, where Republicans picked up a never-seen-in-history 680 state legislative seats.  In doing that, they gained majorities in 14 states, and unified majorities (gaining control in both branches) in 26 states.

From the National Journal:

While the Republican gains in the House and Senate are grabbing the most headlines, the most significant results on Tuesday came in state legislatures where Republicans wiped the floor with Democrats.

Republicans picked up 680 seats in state legislatures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures — the most in the modern era. To put that number in perspective: In the 1994 GOP wave, Republicans picked up 472 seats. The previous record was in the post-Watergate election of 1974, when Democrats picked up 628 seats.

The GOP gained majorities in at least 14 state house chambers. They now have unified control — meaning both chambers — of 26 state legislatures.

That control is a particularly bad sign for Democrats as they go into the redistricting process. If the GOP is effective in gerrymandering districts in many of these states, it could eventually lead to the GOP actually expanding its majority in 2012.

Republicans now hold the redistricting “trifecta” — both chambers of the state legislature and the governorship — in 15 states. They also control the Nebraska governorship and the unicameral legislature, taking the number up to 16. And in North Carolina — probably the state most gerrymandered to benefit Democrats — Republicans hold both chambers of the state legislature and the Democratic governor does not have veto power over redistricting proposals.

It wasn’t just a power shift; it was a historic power shift.  It was a massive repudiation.

Now, for all of that butt-kicking of the Democrats and the Democrat agenda, how did the mainstream media react?  Predictably.

I turned the channel from reliable, trustworthy Fox News to MSNBC and CNN.  It was comical.  From their coverage, you’d think that the entire election consisted in Harry Reid’s, Barbara Boxer’s, and Jerry Brown’s Democrat victories.

Barack Obama’s own Illinous Senate seat will now have a Republican’s butt-print all over it.  That personalizes this ass whipping; Obama couldn’t even hold on to his own seat – even after all the previous shenanigans Democrats tried to pull.  And Republicans snatched at least five other Senate seats from Democrats.  But how about that Harry Reid win?

Laugh, liberals.  Laugh hysterically.  Laugh until you fall down and pass out.

Because you’re butt-kicking is just getting started.  From Politico:

If Senate Democrats think 2010 is a tough cycle, just wait two more years.

They’ll probably hold the Senate majority Tuesday — with a couple of seats to spare, most analysts believe. But 2012 is a different story.

By then, Republicans will be poised to take control of the Senate — with pickup possibilities scattered across the map and a much narrower base of their own to defend.

It’s not simply the lopsided mathematics — with at least 21 Democratic seats on the table in 2012, including two independents who sit with the Democrats, compared with 10 Republicans. It’s where the seats are located.

Start with Democratic seats in three states where President Barack Obama lost in 2008: Nebraska, North Dakota and Montana.

Then go down a list of where Democrats are poised to lose Senate battles this year — Ohio, Florida and Missouri, for example — and Democrats will be right back at it in 2012, defending seats there again.

Throw in some bona fide tossup states — Virginia and New Mexico — and it’s pretty hard not to picture Republicans picking off the handful of seats needed to take control, if Tuesday goes as well for the GOP as experts expect.

For the official record, Republicans won all three of those Senate battles in Ohio, Florida and Missouri.

The really funny thing is that not winning the Senate during a tough economy is actually a blessing in disguise for Republicans – who never had much more than a halfway decent chance at best to capture the Senate this year.

Obama could have run against the Republican-owned Congress, the way Bill Clinton was able to do against Republicans after they took control of both branches in 1994.

Back then, Republicans balanced the budget and reduced the deficit, and Slick Willie took credit for everything good that came along.

Instead, poor one-term Barry will have Harry Reid wrapped around his neck like an albatross in two years.  As all those Republican governors use the power of their offices to make sure he’s a one-term president.  Even as they supervise the redistricting to make it tougher for Democrats to make any kind of a comeback.

The Republican House doesn’t even have to do much, really.  All they need to do is vote on popular measures: the repeal of ObamaCare; permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for everyone; capping spending at 2008 levels; maybe ending the earmark process.  And if Democrats in the Senate don’t pass it, well, doom on the Democrats in the Senate.

I think of it as a beautiful case of poetic justice and dramatic reversal wrapped into two election cycles, a story where Dorothy gets to say to the wicked witch of the West (and that’s Nancy Pelosi, not Christine O’Donnell), “I’ll get you my ugly, and your little messiah too!”

Absolutely everything that the most über-hard-core conservative commentators (such as Rush Limbaugh) have said about Barack Obama has come to pass exactly as they predicted.  The corrupt Chicago community organizer was totally unqualified and unprepared for the presidency, and he has proven to be a total disaster and disgrace to his own political party, along with America.

The worst thing that ever happened to the Democrat Party – to go along with the United States of America – was the election of Barack Obama.  And Republicans aren’t going to let Democrats forget it.  And I’m talking for years to come.