Obama Stage a Coup?

I have heard rumblings of this over the last few months. It is a reflection, I think, of the growing fear that regular Americans have of government, and the immense swing to the left that Obama has attempted to take us on in his first few months in office. Add to that Obama's radical associations and the Chicago-style one-party politics that are Obama's forte, plus the fact that he stubbornly marches forward with his agenda in spite of the overwhelming opposition of the population at large, and you have ample reason for many people to entertain these fears.

But, says Bruce Walker at American Thinker, these fears are not likely to materialize. Here is his column. (or go here)

Some conservatives have begun to openly wonder if Obama is going to seize power in America. Would he want to do this? Perhaps so (a scary thought, but he has promised change.) No one dreamed that Carter, the worst president of the last century, wanted or planned to seize power. Clinton wanted to win power, but the worst anyone expected of Clinton was Huey Long bossism.

Obama rose in politics through the thoroughly corrupt one-party government of Chicago. His spiritual advisor sounds like a rabble-rousing storm trooper. His intellectual mentor, Saul Alinksy, like the Bolsheviks and Nazis, believed in state terrorism. If Obama wanted to follow their leads, could he? I believe not.

Once it became clear that Obama was acting without any pretense of constitutionality, he would need muscle to back him up. Yet the greatest source of that muscle, the United States Military, loathes Obama as much as he loathes them. He would need intelligence, yet his maltreatment of the CIA ensures that those operatives would toss more bananas peels in front of him than real information should he make an extraconstitutional move.

Obama would also need the police, yet the President’s comments about a Cambridge policeman, a member of what has to be among the most politically correct force in America, shows the natural antipathy between Obama and law enforcement officers. The police, “pigs,” to the crowd that Obama belonged to as a community organizer, cannot be a solid support of any seizure of power.

What about the civilian national security force promised by Obama during the campaign? Conservatives are much more likely to be veterans and own guns than leftists. The creation and coordination of a real civilian army would also profoundly antagonize all state and local police forces.

Our federal system still exists, although states’ rights have declined greatly, but state governments still exercise real power (as several governors demonstrated in rejecting stimulus funds.) Nazis, Soviets, and Fascists all had to first crush federalism before gaining absolute power. States founded America, something almost unique among nations – state governments still have a special role in our United States. Crushing states completely would be very hard and very risky.

Beginning a coup or a revolution from above, as some fear Obama may do, also presumes that the revolution will end in a certain direction. If Obama and his elitist cohorts began a revolution, it would surely end: but how? Not only are the military, the CIA, and the police generally disgusted with Obama, but the ideological sentiment of the American people is profoundly out of step with Obama.

In every single state of the nation, according to a recent Gallup Poll, conservatives outnumber liberals. Consistently over the last decade, including the most recent, Battleground Poll, sixty percent of Americans call themselves conservatives. It is impossible to imagine conservatives support a leftist coup or revolution from above.

But the problem for Obama would extend beyond that. Attempting something like a seizure of power could be expected to alienate vast numbers of moderates and many self-defined liberals as well. Probably three-quarters or more of Americans would oppose any practical effort to end democracy, suspend civil rights, or end the Constitution which was open and clear.

Even his political party would have nightmares about any attempt by Obama to seize political power. The consequences of failure, which would be likely, could be a conservative counter-revolution. More likely, though, would be an electoral nightmare for Democrats which would last for decades. This is why a seizure of power is unheard of in the English-speaking democracies of Britain, Canada, America, Australia, and New Zealand.

The British Parliament, in which the Labour Party has huge majorities, has the theoretical power to pass a law which ended the requirement for new elections at least every five years. The Labour Party could simply make its power permanent. This would not even be an unconstitutional seizure of power. Yet no one believes Prime Minister Brown would ever propose that or that he could persuade his party to accept that. Even though he will be thoroughly trounced in the next general election, there will be an election in about nine months.

Politicians need elections just like lawyers need lawsuits. Without contested elections, Congress becomes as irrelevant as the Reichstag after Hitler got the Enabling Act passed. So even Obama's own party, or much of it, would oppose a seizure of power.

Finally, if Obama attempted an effective seizure of power and provoked a real national revolution, the repercussions for Democrats and the left in a successful counter-revolution could lead to a second American revolution in which vast amounts of political power could be explicitly returned to the states, the role of government in our lives precisely defined, the semi-divine status of judges overthrown, and power returned to the people.

Could the leftist choke hold on the media prevent a new revolution? Well, the left has tried to stop the Tea Party movement and the Town Hall protests with no success at all. Polling data shows the increasing ineffectiveness of the establishment media in controlling American’s thinking and actions.

Obama is not going to try to seize power, because he would fail utterly and damn his precious radicalism for decades in America. What he will do is what his predecessors on the left have done: acquire power through Fabian tactics; win one battle (like increasing union bosses’ power) and then move to the next lever of power in government and society. That is the dangerous path we have been on for many decades. We need to fight the very real enemies, not imaginary ones.

For an alternative viewpoint (sort of) click here.